


Revenge

by Madita1908



Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Torture, Character Death, Dark Past, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Family, Hurt, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Kidnapping, Minor Character Death, Pain, Revenge, Sandstorm - Freeform, Sandstorm is down, Sexual Content, Suffering, friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-02-07 08:07:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 34,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12836895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madita1908/pseuds/Madita1908
Summary: -Story better than summary!-Sandstorm was down - that's what the FBI thought, until one of the member started to change and suddenly disappeared. You can't run away from your past.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there!  
> Welcome to my new Blindspot story!  
> This is going to be a long story, since it has already eleven complete chapters!  
> Have fun!

* * *

**Now, somewhere in the US**

* * *

 

“Weller! Weller, we found her!”, CIA-Agent Jake Keaton shouted into his micro, looking shocked to the corner of the room. There was no respond coming from the assistant director of the FBI, but Keaton could hear the gun fire from upstairs. He just starred at the person at the corner. “We are to late”, was all he thought at this moment.  
“Reade? Doe?!”, he tried to call the other FBI agents, no one was answering him. The fight above them must be harder than he had thought.

“Jake!”  
Jake turned around and run to the corner, where his temporary partner, NSA agent Nas Kamal, was kneeing next to the victim.  
“I can’t open the chains”, Nas told him while pattering the victim’s cheek gently to keep her awake. “Tasha! Tasha don’t close your eyes! We got you! You’re safe!”  
Keaton took a look at the chains, that held Tasha down to the ground. They were old, and made of thick metal that was already rusting. Then he took a short glance at Tasha.

The Latina looked like a skeleton. Her body was covered in bruises and bloody cuts. One of her arms seemed to be broken, and her eyes were swollen. Where once her earrings had been, bloody cracks were visible. He fought the impulse to throw up. Keaton saw how Tasha moved her lips, like if she wanted to say something, but nothing left her bloody mouth.  
Her heart wasn’t beating rhythmical and slowed down with every minute, while her body shivered. It took him way to long, to opened the chains. Jake tried to be as gentle as he could, as he pulled away the metal chains. Tasha groaned at his touch. She couldn’t really see who was talking with her, or touching her.  
“We’re losing her”, Nas screeched, “Tasha! Look at me! Good! We got you, you heard me? You’re safe! Don’t close your eyes!” Her voice panicked, when Tasha’s eyes turned inwards and she lost consciousness.


	2. Chapter I: Breaking out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Blindspot day, my dears!  
> I hope you like the way I decided to write this story.  
> I will upload every Thursday or Friday. Which one would you prefer? Tell me in the comments down below the chapter :)
> 
> Have a nice day!

 

* * *

  **half a year earlier, New York**

* * *

 

Sandstorm was down.  
They won. They won the most important fight, the FBI might have fought in the past ten years. The US government was more than proud of the work the FBI did, especially proud of the team around assistant director Weller. They did most of the work, and the New FBI director Eleanor Hirst gave them time off.  
“You guys worked hard for this. If someone deserves vacation then you!” she told them, the day after they won. Hirst didn’t say more to them. As said, they didn’t go to work on the next day, sleeping in.

***three days after Sandstorm had been taken down, State prison of New York***

“You know what, Devon?”  
Devon Penberthy looked up from her breakfast, looking into the eyes of her fellow inmate Louisiana. She didn’t answer. _"Maybe she'll go if I do not answer her”,_ thought Devon but Louisiana didn’t leave.  
“Devon. Wanna know something?”  
Devon throw her fork onto the table, angry. “I don’t give a flying fuck, Louisiana!”  
“Look, it’s about your boyfriend.”  
“Don’t talk about Parker!” Penberthy shouted. Other prisoners looked up and Devon forced herself to calm down. “When Sandstorm take over the government he’ll free me!”  
“They have killed him during the fight,” Louisiana told the woman, who went pale as the porridge on her plate. “He won’t rescue you from here.”  
“W-what?”, asked Devon confused and she felt the urge to vomit onto the floor. Suddenly, she felt weak and alone. Her child would have no father. She would raise it alone, in this prison. “No, no he can’t be dead. You’re a liar! He isn’t dead and he will come for me!”  
Louisiana laughed. “The FBI guys killed him and most of your great Sandstorm. Shepherd is in jail too! You are alone, Devon. All alone.” She giggled, before turning away from Devon. “Even Roman won’t come for you.”  
It took Devon a moment to think about it. “Louisiana! Who killed Parker?!” she shouted after the woman.  
Louisiana grinned. “Well I don’t have this kind of information, but I think I know who can help you with it.”  
“Who?”  
“His name is Josh Castellano. I think he know who did this.”  
“And where do I find him?”  
“He’ll find you.” After this, Louisiana left the room.

**~**

Roman knew exactly, what he had to do. He had shaved his beard off, cut his hair down to his scalp into a military style (which his mother loved) and covered his facial scratches. He had to find Devon. Devon had always been his mother’s assistant, when Remi had been on missions. But Devon had been arrested. Captured by his sister and her stupid team. Now he was in the Visitor area of the prison, where Devon was held, waiting for an insider, who was held here as well.  
Annoyed, Roman looked onto the clock of the room. And when he saw back to the door, just in time to see that the insider was brought in.  
Roman stood up to give his friend a hug. “Josh”, he said, “Long time no see.”  
“ _Ian,_ you never visited me in years. What a pleasure to see you”, Josh said in the same tone.  
“How are you doing?”  
“Great, couldn’t be better. I’m working in the kitchen,” Josh answered, and then lowered his voice to a whisper, “What can I do for you?”  
“I’m glad to hear that. I’m working at the Nikes store in New York City,” Roman spoke loud, before turning his voice down too but not as low as Josh’s, “You remember Devon Penberthy from our first meeting? She’s arrested here too. She might be lonely.”  
“Wow, that must to be really great. How are your wife and kids?” Josh grinned. He knew when it was time to speak in codes.  
Roman nodded slightly. It was good that Josh still knew the codes. “They’re fine. We’re planning a vacation, we would love if you could come with us. Just make sure that Devon isn’t lonely, Ellen can’t stand the thought of knowing Devon alone in here,” the man explained, looking worried. “Ben draw a picture for you, and Lisa wrote you a letter”, Roman added and shoved two papers to Josh. Immediately, a guard appeared to take a look at it. The guard found nothing on them – he should have held them against the light, to see the hidden message on it, but he didn’t.  
“Say them thank you from me. I look what I can do,” Josh said, and then one guard came over to them.  
“The visiting time is over, Castellano,” the guard muttered. Josh stood up, going away from the table.

In the evening, Josh checked the hidden message in the letter Roman had given him. The picture has showed him the time when he has to acted, and what to do. More interesting was the hidden message from the letter. In less than five minutes, he had decoded the words and read the message:

_Devon,_  
_Parker’s dead. Killer’s Agent Zapata._  
_Josh and I will help you to break out of prison. Today. Trust him._  
_We’ll bring them down._  
_Roman._

Zapata. Josh knew this name.  
Once, he had been befriended with an Alexander Zapata, had been in love with his little sister. What was her name again? Natalia? Natalie? Nina? Naomi? He couldn’t remember it probably, but she was the reason, that he was arrested here. Because of her, he had been charged with physical abuse as a teenager. She had become an officer at the NYPD, had shot three of his four cousins and one of his brothers to death and arrested him. He had sworn revenge – bloody revenge, to be honest. He had sworn, that he would kill her entire family, just like she had done with his.  
Once the guard left the hallway of his cell, another guard appeared and opened his sell.  
“You know where Devon is?”, Josh asked the guard, who was a friend of him.  
“Which Devon?”, the guard asked in reply.  
“The one who was brought here three days earlier.”  
“Currently in her cell. Come, I’ll walk you down to it.”

Again, there was a play. The guard, Steven Conroy, acted like he was taking Josh down to the medic area of the prison. He had a food poisoning, Steve told the other guards, when they were stopped. Luckily, the other stuff was to tiered to ask more questions and they got to the women’s hallway without problems.  
“She’s in cell A789,” Steven explained, “It’s on the end of this hallway.”  
“You’re talking too much,” Josh muttered annoyed and walked faster. He needed to free Devon tonight! If not, Romans plan won’t work out! Roman was waiting outside the prison, on the west wall, until two am. If they didn’t come out before two, he would leave for New York without them. Josh looked onto his watch – 11:15 pm. Time was running. _Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock. Tick-To-_  
“Here!” Steven stopped him. He unlocked the heavy door and pushed it open. Immediately, Devon jumped up from her bed.  
“Devon Penberthy?”, the sentry asked.  
“Stands on that door”, Devon answered skeptical.  
“You have to follow us now,” Steven said grapping her by her wrist.  
“Why should I?”  
“Because Roman is waiting for us outside this place,” explained Josh from the hallway.  
“Roman is here?”  
“Yes. Now hurry up! He’s waiting just until two am. We don’t can risk to lose time!”  
Devon’s face lighted up in joy. She followed the men without more asking.

Breaking out of the prison was nearly the easiest thing, Josh ever had done. Surly, he would though otherwise, if Steven wasn’t on their side, helping them.  
“Officer Conroy, where are you taking these inmates?” one entry guard inquired Steven, when they arrived at the last door of the building.  
“To Court. Captain Sullivan want them to be questioned about Sandstorm,” Steven explained, hoping the guard would let them out. “Oh, wait I have the Mail with me.” He pulled out a creased paper and handed it to the man. “The van is waiting for us.”  
The other guard read the paper. It seemed to be official, the paper was sighted by the honored judge Smith.  
“I’ll call the other guards.”  
“No! No that’s not needed. The van is waiting for us right behind that door. Just open it for us,” Steven pleaded.  
“I’ll walk you down.” With these words, the man unlocked the heavy door.

Roman wore a police uniform from the NYPD. He looked annoyed at this watch. 1:55 am. It was time, that Steven arrived with Josh and Devon. A few uncaptured members of Sandstorm were standing next to the van, to improve a team of police officers.  
Finally, Steven, Devon and Josh appeared in the light of the prison. Roman greeted them, and on his command, the two prisoners plus Steven were lead into the van. There weren’t much words spoken during the few minutes.  
The strange guard said goodbye to them, heading back into the prison. When the gate of the jail closed, Roman jumped into the vehicle, sitting next to Josh. He knocked three times on the wall between them and the driver, and the car started to move.


	3. Chapter II: Conversations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back!  
> Thanks for all your comments and Kuddos!  
> Enjoy the chapter!

***five days after Sandstorm had been taken down, NYC, New York***

Tasha Zapata felt like crap, when she woke up in the middle of the night. At the first moment, she didn’t realize, what was going on, until she noticed the heavy rainstorm outside. The raindrops were knocking against her open window, besides that, the whole rain sounded to her like a waterfall. The FBI agent sighed, before climbing out of the warmness of her bed to close the window. She stretched her arms over her head, and regretted it immediately – it still caused to much pain to her shot wound. Carefully, she laid her right hand onto the wound, gently rubbing it to relive ache a bit. Maybe she should take one of the painkillers, the doctors had given her.  
After Tasha closed the window, she sat on her bed, fully awake. She knew her body to well, she wouldn’t fall asleep in the next few hours. She glanced at her wall clock. Two am.

The Latina griped her phone from her nightstand. The blue LED was blinking, showing her, that she might have some messages to read. There were several messages in the team group. Mostly were like _“Have a nice day!”_ or _“What are your plans for today?”_ and Reade’s usual _“Someone up for drinks?_ ”. Tasha found herself asking, if he had any serious hobbies outside the office. She wasn’t surprised to see, that he had sent her serval messages. There were nearly seven, but mostly there were only emojis.  
The first message was _"Tasha are you there?"_ Followed by a monkey that covered his mouth. _"Tasha, are you still awake?"_ Was the second. Immediately followed by the third. " _Taaaaasha_ ".  
Hell, Reade was even annoying in chats. Why hadn’t he just called her? It would have been much easier. Not reading the last ones, she leant back on her bed. Slowly she raised her mobile phone again, clicked on Reade’s Icon and called him.  
_“Tasha? Everything alright?”_ he asked concerned, screaming. She could tell by the sounds from the background, that he was still at his favorite bar.  
“Yeah, you tried to…mail me?” she answered.  
_“I wanted to asked if you up for a few drinks before you are leaving tomorrow…today.”_  
“Are you still at Leprach’s?”  
_“Sure, but you don’t have to come, it’s late.”_  
“I’m up, don’t worry. See you there.” She hung up the call, before she looked around for her clothes.

**~**

Reade believed she wouldn’t show up.  
_“She’s still in pain”_ , he told himself, _“She’s on pain medication, she can’t drink. Besides that, she has to get up early to get the flight.”_ He swallowed his drink, ordering a new one, when he noticed how the bar’s door opened. It was Tasha.  
“Here”, he yelled to her and she gave him a short smile, before coming over to him. She sat next to him, taking off her coat. He saw, how her face twisted with pain, just for a second.  
“Hey”, she said softly, sitting down next to him. A smiled were painted on her lips, giving him a warm feeling. He liked her smile.  
“The usual?”, he asked directly. Reade tried not to look to much at her shoulder. He couldn’t stand it.  
“Yeah.” In a way, Tasha was glad, that Reade wasn’t asking too much.

Reade ordered her favorite drink, before he took a closer glimpse at her. She looked as tired as a dog, dark rings under her eyes, her skin paler than usual, or maybe he just thought that she was pale, for the reason that she wasn’t wearing makeup right now. Reade peeked at her clothing. She was wearing a loose shirt, and he could see that her wound was still slightly bleeding.  
Guilt started to rise in his chest, because he felt responsible for what had happened to her. If he had taken better care of the shooter, she wouldn’t have been shot. When he closed his eyes, he still could hear her breathing heavily, feeling her blood running through his fingers, while she tried to stay awake.  
“Tasha, I’m…uh, I’m sorry for…”, he started to speak, but stuttered, because he didn’t have the right words to explain his feelings.  
She knew directly, what he was going to say. “Ed, listen. You are not responsible for what had happened, okay? I got shot, this is our working risk. We know that this can happen to us, and it happened to me. I’m still alive”, she answered, looking into his nutbrown eyes, “Don’t do this to you, please.”  
“But I am response for it, Tasha. Look, if I had taken better care of them, Parker wouldn’t have had the chance to shoot you!” Reade looked away from her. “It’s my fault, Tasha. It’s my fault that you are in pain.”  
Tasha looked at him confused. “Edgar, don’t say that again,” she answered him slowly, “please. What had happened wasn’t your fault! I could have been more careful too, but I wasn’t. All I had thought was, that you are leaving our team, to teach knew agents!” She drank her drink in one sip, “I was angry about your decision, but I accepted it, because it’s good for you to try new things.” She ordered another one. There was something in her voice. Maybe it was pain, that bleeds through her words. Reade couldn’t really tell.  
“You were angry about my decision? Tasha, I’m not leaving the US.” To be honest, he wasn’t really sure, if Quantico was the right thing for him to do. On one hand, he wanted to do something new, something different. But on the other side, he didn’t want to leave his friends and family. He didn’t want to leave Tasha.  
“But you are leaving our team.” Okay, she was angry again. “You are leaving me with these idiots”, she added half angry, half laughing. Well, that was a statement. Of course, it wasn’t her serious opinion about her friends, but at some point, he understood her.  
“I’m not gone forever, you know? You can come and visit me there. It’s just five hours with the car, you know?” He didn’t tell her, that he wasn’t sure if he should really go. Leaving her and the team alone. Leaving her alone.  
Tasha hit him lightly. “I’m not driving five hours to see my best friend!”  
“You could take a flight.”  
“Yeah, no. One flight per year is enough for me”, she joked. Then she got serious again. “I’m really nervous about my nephew. I mean, what if I drop him and he drowns?”

Edgar looked up. That’s the heart of the matter!  
She _would_ take a flight to see him, but she was nervous about her coming flight. Over the next two weeks, Tasha would be in Chicago for her nephew’s baptism. Her brother had asked her to be godmother, before the boy had been born. She hadn’t met her newborn nephew yet, because of the work. All she had were photos, and sometimes she had been sitting in the office, facetiming with her older brother, to see her nephew.  
Reade giggled. “Tasha. You won’t drop him! Trust me, you won’t. How old is he now?” He looked at her and for one moment, he thought about her, holding a baby. The image that built before his inner eyes melt his heart. “You are a woman. You don’t drop babies.”  
“Oh, you can’t put me in the same box”, Tasha said, “I knew enough people who dropped babies. Levi is nearly five months old now. I’m just nervous about being his godmother. I think Kate isn’t happy with this decision. She doesn’t like me much, I believe. And I don’t know why.”  
“Well, all I can say is, that you should talk to her about this. Say her what you just said to me.” He laid his hand upon hers, and squeezed it softly. “And you’ll make a great godmother.”

They both laughed again, before Reade offered her to give her a hand with her wound, before she leaves hours later.

**^at the same time, somewhere in New York^**

The group was still in the van, when Josh finally asked, what they would do now.  
“Revenge”, spilled Devon out, angry. Pain bleeds through her voice. Pain, caused by the death of her boyfriend. “Killing these shitheads”, she added then.  
Roman gently laid a hand onto her shoulder. “Nah-nah, Devon. Remember our plan.”  
She laughed bitterly. “The plan failed. Parker’s dead! We need to revenge him! I want them dead! Especially…”  
“Tasha Zapata. I know. You get your revenge, Devon. Don’t worry. She will pay for it. Trust me.”  
Josh looked up. “Wait. The name is Tasha? Like _Natasha_ Zapata?”  
“Yeah, why?”  
“I knew her since school”, Josh answered Roman, “Because of her I was in jail and lost most of my family. I had been charged with physical abuse as a teenager because of her. I want revenge too.”  
Devon looked at him in disbelieve. “Because of her you got charged? What have you done?”  
Josh shook his head. “It’s not important. More important is, that this bitch gets what she deserves. Pain.”

Roman smirked. His own plan seemed to work out perfectly. Of course, he had known that Josh had a backstory with Zapata. His mother had told him about this years before.  
“We all calm down now”, Roman said then, “Lucky for you two, I have prepared something, so we can start directly.” He pulled out a basket from beneath the seat and opened it. There were letters in it, and pictures. Handwritten letters and letters made out newspaper and printed letters. Roman handed them gloves to wear. “Make sure you don’t touch anything in this box without them”, he ordered, “Otherwise this won’t turn out well.”  
As told, Devon put on the gloves, before reaching for one letter. She read them and looked up.  
“It’s a threatening letter”, she said, “this won’t do nothing to her.”  
“It will, trust me in this, Devon. Since my time with the FBI, I knew serval things about them. And what do you think is Zapata’s Achilles verses?”  
“Her work? Agent Reade?” she supposed.  
“Reade is a part maybe. I’m not sure about their relationship. No, it’s her family. To be more specific, her grandparents and her brother’s family.”  
Devon smiled. Slowly, this made sense to her. “So, we are threatening her with killing her family and friends?”  
Roman nodded. “And if she can no longer live with the pressure, we will kidnap her – we will be torment her and the FBI will watch and be powerless! We will rip them apart from inside. They will come rescue her, and we will kill them.”

Steven applauded after Roman had finished his explanation. “This is such a good plan…”, he said, and the three persons watched him. Slowly Roman turned to him. His face was cold and emotionless. Steven continued to talk, not realizing, that the Sandstorm leader had pulled out a pistol, pointing at him.  
“…to rap….” A shot stopped Steven in the middle of his ideas, how to torment the woman, he doesn’t know. The officer’s amber colored eyes went dull instantly, and he fell over onto the van’s ground, dead.  
“He was an airhead”, Roman explained, knocking two times at the window for the driver to stop. “Josh, open the door.”  
Josh said as Roman ordered, and together they toss Steven’s body out of the vehicle.

“Now that we can talk freely”, Roman said, after they continued to drive, “Let us set up a plan. Josh. Tell us all you remember from Zapata.”


	4. Chapter III: Change

* * *

**three months later, somewhere in New  York** 

* * *

 

“Your plan seems to work”, Devon said as she entered the room where Roman were sitting in front of a computer. “You thought, I’ve planned a disaster again, didn’t you?”, Roman asked grinning, “Look. Josh sent new pictures of our lovely target.” He pointed on the screen, where more than one Picture showed Tasha Zapata.  
“To be honest: yes, I thought this might not work, but I see you’re getting better since everything. Let me take a good look on these. Do we have some new information’s? Does she pay?”  
“Yes. She’s paying. Just take a look at our bank account.”  
“She really believes that her family is in danger”, Devon laughed, “How stupid. Maybe we should kill someone she loves.”  
“Nah-Nah. Just think about the damage we can do with it. It will take us only a month or two to get her where we want her to be. And when we finally got her, we’ll kill her friends and family. She must see it with her own eyes.”  
The pregnant woman nodded. “You will be right. Look how paranoid she already is. What can I do next?”  
“Have you eaten something?” Roman requested, as he noticed the still full plate of dinner next to her. They’d eaten about an hour ago, but Devon told them, she would eat it in front of the computer.  
“Don’t mother me, Roman. I want this bitch down.”  
“Just asking. Print the pictures of her nephew and write the usual stuff on it. I’m checking our camera in her apartment.” With that, Roman got up from his chair and leaves the room.

For a moment, Devon took a closer look on the pictures. Zapata already looked tired, when she carried her nephew around the Central Park a few days ago.  
_“She deserves it”_ , she thought, _“She murdered Parker. She deserves to suffer.”_

 

***^One week later, FBI office of NYC, New York^***

 

Edgar Reade perceived, that something was upsetting Tasha.  
She had become quieter and had begun to isolate herself more and more from the team, since he came back from Quantico. Reade didn’t really know what had happened during the past months he hadn’t been around, but it was safe that something _had_ happened. Maybe, something had happened in Chicago, but she didn’t talk about the details of the vacation. All she spoke about, were her brother’s family, especially about her nephew Levi, whom she adored so much. She showed them videos of the little guy who had taken her heart in a storm. A week ago, they all met in the Central Park, and Tasha introduced them to her brother’s family. Patterson and Jane immediately fell in love with Levi, while Weller and Reade could talk with Alex about football.

Since then Tasha isolated herself even more.  
He and the rest of the team observed, that she had lost more than a few pounds during the past months. It wasn’t unusual, that Tasha work on her body, but this weight loss was suspicious. Tasha seems to eat like she always did; nothing to healthy, and nothing to unhealthy. And for the record, she didn’t count calories or so.  
Once or twice the FBI Agent tried to talk to her, privately, but she blocked. Said, that she didn’t need him worried about her. That she was fine, and this weight loss wasn’t that bad.  
“I just want to live healthy. You know, I got fat and I just want to look good”, she answered the last time, when he asked her. No, she wasn’t fat in his eyes. And he told her that.  
“Look Tasha, I’m just thinking you are losing to much weight. You were never fat. You are beautiful as you are! Or is it because of Devon’s break out?”  
“I’m fine, Ed. Don’t worry,” She gave him a soft smile, before she turned away from him.

He didn’t believe her. He was concerned, because something was going on with his best friend. Something that let her look tired and sick. _“Maybe she was still shocked by the fact, that Devon broke out of prison”,_ he thought, it would explain some of her behaviour. The team had learned about Devon’s escape a few days ago – and he remembered how Tasha got paler with every word.

The day after she had told him, that she was fine, she was wearing expensive make up to cover the bags under her eyes – he saw the makeup in her locker, as he walked past her. He tried to speak to her about this, tried to help her, but she just turned on her heels and left him alone in the locker room.  
Even when Weller asked her later, if she was going to a bar with them, she said "I'm tired. Another day maybe," and went without a goodbye.

 

***four days later, FBI office of NYC, New Work***

 

Tasha’s condition didn’t get any better during the past days. It even got worse. She didn’t really talk to the team anymore, after Reade had tried to talk to her. One time, she yelled at Reade that he should better leave her alone. She brushed into tears after it, sitting on the floor next to her locker.  
_“It’s not their business”,_ she thought bitterly at this moment, _“No one has to be thrown in it with me. Nobody needs to worry.”_  
Jane was the one who found her there, knees up to her chest, crying. She knew that the morning had been hard for Tasha, but never saw her shaken like this.  
“Hey Tasha, what’s wrong?” Jane wanted to know, while she kneeled down next to her friend.  
“I…I just sprayed hairspray into my eyes”, Tasha lied, pointing to her open locker, “I wasn’t careful.”  
“Common, I’ll help you. Did you rinse it out with water?”  
“I already did it. Thanks…”  
Zapata wished, she could tell Jane the truth, wished it from the bottom of her heart. But she didn’t feel safe about it. _“They always know what I am doing at the moment. They will hurt them, if I talk to somebody.”_

Hours later, after a long meeting with Hirst, she laid her head onto her desk, sighed. God, she was as tired as a dog, but the office wasn’t a good place for a nap. Maybe, she could go a few minutes earlier today.  
“Ma’am?”  
Tasha almost jumped up, looking questioned at the young messenger who was standing next to her desk, holding a letter in his hands.  
“Are you Agent Zapata?” the men asked and she nodded slowly. “This is for you”, he laid the letter onto her desk, walking away, not waiting a second for her response.  
A letter.  
Tasha’s heart started to race. Another message. By now, she knew, what the letter looks like. Now they are contacting her in the office too. Scared, she looked around for her team, and when she didn’t find someone, she hastily opened the letter.  
Inside a photo of her and Reade, from yesterday.

_We know what you did. $15,000 until 6 O’clock or we will blow him away_ stood on the backside of the photo. Tasha frowned. $15,000 wasn’t easy for her to rose in this short time.

“Tash, are you alright?”, she heard Reade abruptly saying after he appeared at his desk. Fast, she put the photo back into the case, trying to looked relaxed as she turned to him.  
“Yeah, why shouldn’t I?”, she asked him, smiling. Like she hasn’t yelled at him earlier.  
He saw how fake this smile was, but didn’t told her he knew it. “You look pale”, Reade answered instead, coming over to her. He looked closely at her, noticed, that she was wearing again a ton of make up to cover the bags under her red eyes. Immediately, he asked himself, why her eyes were red. “Sure, you’re okay?”  
“Yes…It’s um, it’s just that I got the invitation for Andy’s anniversary…I just thought about him”, she lied.  
“Do you want me to come with you? As…um, personal help?” Reade wasn’t sure what to say. Yes, Tasha missed her former partner with her whole body. She had loved him like she loves him. Andy had meant family to her – family she hadn’t in New York City.  
“No, thanks…you know that I want to be alone on that day”, Tasha replied, and it was the truth. “It’s really kind of you, Ed, thank you.”  
She stood up from her chair, kissed him softly on his cheek – something she had never had done before. While she walked away from him, he thought about it even more. She never had kissed him in public. And it scared him.  
“Tash. We all understand if you aren’t feeling well after these hard days”, he said in a sudden urge, like he has to cheer her up. He wanted the old Tasha back, the one who jokes with him and trained with him.

_“I can’t tell him”,_ a voice in Tasha’s head said, _“He will be dead on the next day. You can’t risk his life. I can’t tell him! I have to protect them! They are not responsible for my mistakes. Only I am. I can’t risk their life’s…I can’…risk anybody’s life…”_ Her body reacted to her feelings and she felt how she started to throw up. Luckily, the woman’s resting room was near and she speed up her pace, making it in time into a cabin.

Tasha didn’t notice that nearly the entire team had watched her escaping. She knew that Reade had saw her – of course, how could he not?  
Patterson and Jane walked over to Reade. Like Reade, they had seen their friends change. And it scared Patterson to shit. Tasha always had been the tough one – the nearly unbreakable. Patterson didn’t think that something could bother Tasha so much.  
“Do you think this is the aftermath of everything?”, Patterson asked Reade quietly.  
“Three months after it? No, I think it’s something different”, Reade answered her.  
“You know, she’s that odd, since she came back from Chicago”, Jane replied.  
“You think something had happened there?”  
“I don’t know. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. Quiet…she’s coming back!”

**~**

On the same evening, Tasha finally agreed to come with them for dinner at _American Drive_ , their favourite restaurant. They were laughing and joking and to their surprise, Tasha acted like she always does. She talked freely to her friends, but never told something too private. They all ordered they favourite dish, while joking on Wellers and Janes behaviour.  
“You and Jane”, Tasha said amused, “need an office without windows! I can’t get rid of the image of you two!”  
“Oh, common Tasha! As if you wouldn’t risk that!”, Jane replied.  
“I’m not saying that, especially not since I love risk, but you know that everybody in the office saw you, right?”  
She spoke openly about her risk addiction – everyone in the team knew it and tried their best to help her. And it worked. Sometimes, Tasha tried to go to field missions without wearing a protecting vest, but then Weller steps in, holding her back until she put it on.  
“I’m not shy”, answered Weller before their meals came, “We do both have what others should have too. A good sexual relationship.”

During the dinner, Tasha’s phone vibrated a few times. She didn’t take a look onto her phone but after the sixth time she looked – and it turned out to be a mistake. Her hunger disappeared within seconds and she didn’t looked that happy anymore. She looked pale and ill.  
“Aren’t you hungry, Tasha?” Patterson asked her friend after five minutes, who was sitting opposite of her. Tasha shook her head, pretended to pick up some food with her fork, but didn’t eat it, she just moved it on her plate. “Weller is already eating our dessert”, Patterson added, but nothing changed Tasha’s mind.  
"Not really", she replied as honestly as she could, sounding more than tired, "I’m not that hungry…maybe I had caught the flu from the office…I’m not feeling well for a few days now."  
By this answer, even Reade raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. There wasn’t a flu going around in the office. Nobody was ill. He changed a glance with Patterson, but his feeling told him that this wasn’t the true reason. It had something to do with the mail Tasha just had received. As she looked on her phone again, he tried to take a look on it too – causing Tasha to kick him under the table. But this kick didn’t hurt as usual.  
“You’ve to eat something, Tasha! You might feel better afterwards”, Patterson protested, which caused Tasha to lay her fork and knife down. The Latina didn’t answer this argument. She hated it, when people were mothering her. Wordless, she stands up, payed for her meal and drinks and walked out of the room.

Leaving her friends without knowing what was wrong. She didn’t return that evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Have a nice blindspot day tomorrow!


	5. Capter IV: Explosion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Pre Blindspot-Day! 
> 
> I hope you like this long chapter (over 2,000 words!)
> 
> I hope you all will have merry and blessful christmas!

While walking – or better running home, Tasha thought about the messages she had received in the bar.  
_“If you tell your friends about this, we will poison all of you.”_ Stood under one picture. Tasha swallowed. They  
had been in the bar too. Sickness started to rise in her body, causing the urge to vomit in public.  
_“Look. We see everything you do. Maybe your dish is already poisoned?“,_ stood under another picture that had been sent. She felt like someone was following her, and when she turned to look, she just found tourists walking behind her, looking over the bright lights of New York. The feeling of being followed didn’t stop when she arrived her apartment building.

Behind a house corner, Josh was hiding. Yes, he had followed her – since weeks now and he smiled, as he walked over the entrance of the building. He knew when she woke up in the morning, when she leaves her home for her morning workout. When she came back for the shower and when she leaves for work. He knew her day like he had known it in their youth. Josh pushed the door open with his shoulder and looked around, to see if he was alone. After a moment he went to the mailbox, putting a new small packet in front of it with her address on it. Josh smiled. Soon, he would have her back. Back for revenge. Back for starting a _family,_ she refused to have with him so many years ago. When Devon and Roman had been finished, he would take her to his parent's home in Texas and hold her in the cellar, while he raised their children upstairs. The ringtone of his cell phone cut through his thoughts, and he escaped from the building.

It just had been a message von Devon.  
_We got the animals. Marchant waiting at Williamsburg Corner for you._  
_Hurry!_

Josh’s smile got bigger. Everything seemed to work perfectly. To be honest, he didn’t really though that this might work – Roman wasn’t a good planner. But Roman had done a good job. Over the past three months, Tasha had received nearly 500 threating messages, by post and electronic. Ordering a taxi, he stood in the shadow of Tasha Zapata’s apartment building, imagining, what she looked like as she opened the new packet.

**^American Drive, New York City, New York^**

“What’s wrong with her?”, Patterson asked her friends, after all ate their dessert.  
“Maybe she told us the truth and she’s really ill. Just think about the people in the elevator today. Three of them were sick”, Jane answered, taking another spoon full of vanilla ice cream.  
“No, Tasha isn’t ill. She’s odd for months now. I think, it might have to do something with her time in Chicago”, Reade told them, “I mean…since she’s back, she’s hiding something from us. I can’t tell much, because of Quantico, but all what you guys told me made me think that. Tasha changed, we all noticed it”, He took a sip of his beer.  
“I wouldn’t worry too much. We had a hard week, what if she just needs to relax?”, Weller said and it sounded to Reade and Patterson as he hadn’t noticed what was going on with their friend.  
“Kurt, I think the same as Patterson and Reade. Something is going on with Tasha. She’s often tired, and a few days ago, she nearly fell asleep during driving the car!”  
But Weller didn’t really listen to his girlfriend. He thought, they lay it on thick. Ordering another beer,  
he placed his left arm around Jane, pattering her arm. “This happened to me too, and you are not saying something is wrong with me”, he joked, but the evening was ruined.

***^One day Later, FBI office of NYC, New York^***

Tasha scanty talked to her friends on the next day. She didn’t tell them what had happened and why she’d left yesterday. She didn’t need them to worry about it. They all had their own problems.

“Are you feeling better today, Tasha?”, Patterson wanted to know as she entered the locker room where Tasha were putting away her bag, after she’d came back from her lunch break. The Latina ignored her, hoping she would drop it. “I asked something, Tasha”, Patterson said after a minuet.  
“What do you want to hear from me, Patterson?”, Tasha replied in a dark voice. “I wasn’t feeling well, okay?”  
“Maybe I can help you getting better. Tell what’s wrong and we figure it out. Trust me!”  
“It’s none of your business, Patterson. I don’t need help.” Tasha slammed her locker door and walked past her friend.  
Patterson looked after Tasha, shaking her head. She just wanted to help!

 

* * *

**another three months later, Leprach’s Bar, NCY, New York**

* * *

For the first time in the past months, Tasha had fun at the bar. She was laughing and joking and Reade let her be like this.  
She was like a free spirit, careless and maybe more herself than usual. There were only the two of them still at the bar – their friends had gone home an hour after they ate together. Now, the best friends were alone, drinking a bit too much. Reade wasn’t that drunken like Tasha was. She really was loaded.  
Reade couldn’t remember the last time, he saw her like this – drunken, out of control. Like, she didn’t care what would happened to her if she drank too much. Like there were no morning coming.  
“Tasha”, he mumbled when she finally sat down next to him, after dancing around the bar, “Lets…get you…” he couldn’t finish his sentence, because she grabbed his face with her cold hands.  
“Shut up!”, She screamed to be louder than the music before she leant in to kiss him. His member took place in his brain and he kissed her back. Both didn’t really know what they were doing, but at some point, Tasha broke the kiss, fishing out some money to pay for the drinks, when she looked at Reade. “Want…to go somewhere else?” She wanted to know. He had completely forgot, what wanted to say to her. All he wanted now was her. Edgar wanted her, the way, she wanted him.  
“Where?” he asked then, looking onto her eyes. Her pupils were bigger than usual and her breath smelled like tequila, while her lips still tasted like strawberry lipstick.  
“My place.”

**~^Tasha’s apartment, half an hour later^~**

They didn’t know how they made it Tasha’s apartment, but when they entered the flat, everything went faster.  
Reade pressed her against the wall next to the door, kissing her passionately. She on the other hand, tried to pull him out of his jacket. He helped her, and the fabric lands carelessly onto the ground.  
Drunken, as they were, they wandered to Tasha’s bedroom. They only left each other to get rid of their clothes.

Tasha reached to pull her blouse over her head herself; it took her a few moments to get it over her head, because she hasn’t unbuttoned all of the buttons. Then she kicked off her jeans, before opening her bra and let it slide down her arms, until it was laying on the ground. Reade was much faster with his clothes; maybe he wasn’t as drunken as she was, but still to drunken to stop his lust. When she finally tossed the garment away, Ed instantly ran his hands over her body, pressing kisses to her décolleté and then to her stomach, before he lifted her up, just to lay her onto her bed. Again, he kissed her body down, but now he went deeper with his kisses, until his lips pressed kisses against her upper thighs as he dragged her underwear down over her legs.  
They didn’t need a foreplay, it was like their bodies had been waiting for this a long time, always ready. Pleasure runs through Tasha’s whole body, while Reade hovering himself above her.

She bit her lip at the feeling of him inside of her, and gripped his shoulders as her legs came to cradle his waist. He drew back out and pushed back in, his hands moved up and down on her body, during his thrusts. She let out a groan, when Read started to increase the pace, and her hands wandered restless over his arms and back. Closing her eyes, she arched under him, while her pleasure sized even more. Her nails were digging into his back, as she abruptly screamed his name, while she her legs wrapped tighter around his waist. This orgasm blew her mind completely, she heard her blood rushing in her ears, as her entire body seemed to be on fire.  
Hit by her orgasm, Reade gripped her hips, gave one last strong thrust before he joined her climax.

It took a few minutes for them both to recover. Tasha didn’t mind, that Reade was still on top of her, but she gave a small wince when he pulled out, feeling rather empty. The alcohol in their blood made them tired, and soon booth fell asleep.

***The next morning, Tasha’s Apartment, NYC, New York***

The first thing, Tasha thought when she woke up was _“What had happened last night?”._ She couldn’t remember one thing clearly; all she knew was, that she danced around in the bar, havening some drinks with her best friend. Tasha noticed that she was naked – the blanket was itching on her skin. She opened her eyes a bit to see where she was and was thankful that she was in her own bedroom. To be naked in the own apartment was OK. The Latina closed her eyes again, thinking, that she would have a great hangover today, when she heard someone snoring next to her. _“Oh god”,_ she thought, _“okay. This might be just a random one-night-stand.”_ Slowly she turned her head to the side where the snoring had come from and opened her eyes. Her first action was to jump out of her bed, when she saw who laid next to her. On the other side of her bed was lying her partner. Her best friend – also naked. _“Oh no! No, no, no, no!”_ , her mind screamed, while she grabbed one blanket from bed, covering her body with it. Quietly she emerged from the room into her bathroom, where she showered quickly. Under the shower, Tasha suddenly realized, that Reade might find the threating letters and packages in her living room. Panic started to rise in her chest, while she got dressed. How should she explain it to him? What should she say? _"I should have thrown them away”,_ she thought, _“This isn’t good. Reade will find them, and they will kill him. They will kill all of them. All my family and friends.”_ She would be responsible for the death of ten people! No, she wouldn’t let this happen!

When she was fully dressed into her sports outfit, she went to her living room und started to hide her secrets.  
“Shit”, she cursed, as she noticed the blood underneath the last packet. She needed to put them away, but firstly she covered it with a blanket from her couch, just in time when Reade came out of her bedroom. He was already dressed. When did he woke up? Why didn’t she hear him? Did he saw what she had done?  
“Good morning”, he said, and his tone sounded difficult. Maybe tired or confused – she couldn’t really tell.  
“Morning”, she replied, not looking at him. She felt embarrass, hoping he would left directly.

But Reade didn’t move out from the corner where he was standing. He observed his friend closely, not knowing what to say. For the first time in months, he saw her apartment from the inside again. Everything looked like he remembered; it was clean and organized. Only the many packets were new to him.  
Ed looked back to Tasha. Her hair was wet, and he assumed that she had showered earlier, while her skin was pale. She hadn’t put make up on, and even though she was wearing her thick outside sportswear, Ed could see how thin she had become.  
“Tasha”, he started, but she stopped him with her hand.  
“No. We won’t tell anybody about what happened last night. We won’t talk about this and we will act like nothing happened between us”, she said, her voice sounded ice-cold, “Nothing had happened.” God, her heart hurt. Deep inside, she knew that there where feelings for Reade, but she couldn’t allow herself to feel it.  
“We had sex, Tasha. This isn’t nothing! We both were drunk, but at least we should talk about it.”  
“No, Reade. We _had_ sex, yes. That’s all.”  
Edgar shook his head. She was stubborn. “I want to talk about this, Tasha. If you want it or not, we have to talk about this! Even if you are just listening!”  
Suddenly, her emotions changed, and she looked angry at him. “I’m not interested in what you want, Reade! Shout up and leave my fucking apartment!” Her voice got louder and he raised his hands in defence.  
“Whoa. Calm down! I did nothing!” He saw her hold her head because her own hangover appeared as a headache. Out of an instinct, he walked over to her, and pulled her into his arm. She fought him, until he let go of her. _“Where is my best friend?”_ , he asked himself in thoughts, not recognizing his best friend anymore. Sure, it was Tasha in front of him, but she wasn’t like herself. It deeply hurt his feelings, seeing her like this.  
Tasha gritted her teeth, looking at him. Why didn’t he understand? “Leave now!” she screamed, her face as red as a chili.

**^Somewhere in New York^**

Devon grinned at the screen. This was better than Keeping up with the Kardashians.  
“What’s so funny?”, Roman questioned when he entered the room.  
“This. Just look. This bitch is really down. Right now, she is fighting with her best friend”, she explained.  
Roman came over to Devon to take a look on it. He saw how Zapata yelled at Reade, while she was throwing things in his direction. She was in a great tantrum, Roman knew that, and that was, where he wanted her to be. Down on the ground, no friends left for rescue. He saw, how Reade shook his head again before he left the apartment, how Tasha throwed things around in her apartment.  
“You know what that means, Devon?” Roman said, and it wasn’t a question.  
“No what?” Devon answered, before shoving a donut in her mouth.  
“We’re kidnapping her tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment so I know what you think about it!


	6. Chapter V: The start

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all had wounderful hollidays!
> 
> see you all in the new year!

“Are you sure?”, Devon questioned, looking at Roman, like he had said something stupid.  
“Yes. Look at her. She’s down. She’s hurt and alone”, Roman answered pleased, "We'll break into her apartment when she goes out for her evening jogging, and when she comes back, we'll grab her, hopefully without any problems in the form of the FBI. Now call Josh and tell the others to prepare everything in Chicago. Then take the next flight to Chicago. I'll finish everything else here." Roman stood up and left the room. Devon looked after him, before she begun to make the phone calls, starting with Josh. Something at this guy made her nervous. He was aggressive, like Roman was, but on the other hand, Roman knew when he had to control his anger. Josh doesn’t know how to control himself. He was like a bomb, and she doesn’t want to be there, when he exploded.

 _“Yeah?”_ Josh asked her, when he answered the call.  
“Go and prepare the van. Roman wants to take her today”, Devon said without any emotion.  
_“Today? Why?”_  
“She and Reade had a great dispute. She’s down, Roman said, in the perfect condition to take her.”  
_“Did she get the carton? From yesterday?”_  
“Yes. She did. She vomited next to herself.”  
_“Really? O my, she can’t keep her contains. How nice.”_ Josh chuckled, and Devon rolled with her eyes.  
“Don’t waste your time with stalking her.” Devon hung up the call and looked back at the display. In her eyes, it was way too early to kidnap the woman. They still had plenty of threating letters to send.

**^Zapata’s Apartment, NYC, New York^**

After Reade finally had left her apartment, Tasha collapsed crying onto the kitchen floor. She was totally exhausted by the past months and the dispute with Reade pushed her over the edge of the cliff.  
Her breathing was fast and her mind raced. _“I need to tell someone. This can’t go further like this. I had the chance to tell Ed. I missed it”_ , her inner voice said, _“But if I had told him, they would have killed him! I can’t risk their lives because of my mistakes. There is nobody I can talk to.”_

She laid there for over an hour, crying heavily. She messed up with her best friend, with all of her friends. Nobody would help her anymore. _“I can’t pay them anymore. I whipped out my savings. I won’t ask Grandma or Alex for it. They don’t have something to do with it. I can’t risk Levi’s life….”_ Her thoughts stopped suddenly, when there was a knock at her door. Tasha jumped up. _“Maybe it’s Ed”,_ her inner voice said, but to her disappointment it was a messenger with three packets for her.  
“Are you alright, Ma’am?” the currier asked her, when he saw her face.  
“Uh, yes. I just…lost my father”, she lied and the currier excused his questioned.  
“I’m sorry for your lost, Ma’am”, he said and left then.  
Tasha sighed and closed the door. The first packets were her last orders from amazon – a new pair of sport shoes and new books. She was scared of the third packet. Again, it was without a sender, and the carton felt wet. Slowly she opened the second box – her stomach contracted painfully, when she saw the inlet. Tasha started to vomit directly onto the ground next to her – something she hasn’t planned. No, she won’t go to work today. Her fingers were trembling, when she wrote Weller.

_Sorry, I’m not feeling well today._  
_I’m going to the doc._  
_See you tomorrow,_  
_Tasha_

For a moment, Tasha thought to call Weller instead of writing him. He could help her – maybe. He was the assistant director of the FBI and one of her closest friends in town. Kurt would know what had to be done to help her. But her mind changed again, when she saw the wet box on her counter again. When she would tell Weller now, she had to explain why she didn’t told them and why she didn’t throw the boxes away.  
_“Where do you exactly put dead animals away, if you don’t want to let anyone know?”,_ she would answer, knowing that he couldn’t answer that. No, she won’t tell him. Finally, she sent the message, turning out the mobile phone before going back into her bedroom.  
“I have to change the bed”, was her first opinion when she saw the mess by her and Reade’s actions. She could wash it with his other clothes. Since his washing machine was broken, she washed some of his clothes so he hasn’t to go to the washing salon.

She could hear Reade’s voice inside her head, yelling at her, what she thought she was doing the past months. Why she had started to isolate herself from the team, from him. Why she made a secret out of everything. Why she was now that destructive. She hadn’t answered him, because she was too scared and he yelled at her again, before he grabbed her by her shoulders, like he wanted her to wake up. That has scared her more than his shouting, and she slapped him in the face, so that he had to let go of her. Surprised, he had touched his cheek, not saying a word. She hadn’t felt sorry at this moment, because she had been in a tantrum, throwing stuff around, until he left.

**^FBI Office, NYC, New York^**

“Weller, can I talk to you for a second?”, Patterson asked Weller after he came out of his office.  
Kurt turned around to look at her. “Sure”, he answered, “what’s the matter?”  
Patterson took a deep breath. “It... It’s about Tasha. Have you seen her today?”, she said sounding more nervous.  
“She isn’t coming today. She doesn’t feel well today.”  
The female agent sighed. “She didn’t look good, the past days, don’t you think?”  
“What do you mean exactly? Patterson, Tasha’s fine - she had a tough week. The Case, her court appointment. She might just be tried. She wrote that she’s going to the doctor today.”  
“Kurt, I mean it!”, Patterson snapped. Did Weller mean she’s not serious? “She doesn’t always go home after work; did you know that? I stepped on her for more than a few times! She didn’t call me for our monthly movie night at her apartment. I haven’t been there in months! It’s like she didn’t want us to know something!”, she added now sounding angry. Why did Weller doesn’t take her thoughts seriously? Tasha was her best friend, the person she could always count on when she needed help.  
“You’re imagen things. Tasha needs time for herself, that’s all. Maybe she needs some time off.” Weller gave her a smile, “I have a meeting now, see you later”, he said and went then.

Patterson was left behind. Did he really thought, she had said what she said as a joke? No, Patterson was really concerned about Tasha.  
When she started to see Tasha slowly losing control as she was doing, it scared the blonde woman more than anything else. Whenever she saw Tasha, she wondered what had happened to her best friend. What had thrown her out of the way, that she had become so quiet? That she refused to talk to her? Or to Weller or Jane? Did Tasha talk to Reade? Patterson couldn’t answer this, but she would ask the agent. Somebody has to know what was going on with Tasha!

**~**

Asking Reade wasn’t as easy as Patterson thought it would be. The agent had been late for work – he showed up an hour after Lunch – and wasn’t in a good mood.  
“Are you alright?” Patterson wanted to know, and Reade answered, that he was fine, before turning to his paperwork. He didn’t feel the urge to talk to his friend. But Patterson had another idea. She didn’t leave him alone, when he asked her to leave him alone, so he could work.  
“I’m not leaving until I know what’s bothering you”, Patterson said, “Talk to me, Reade.”  
“Nothing is bothering me, Patterson. I just had to much drinks last night okay?”, he replied.  
“Do you know why Tasha isn’t feeling well today?”  
“Why should I know this?” Reade hoped, the perky blonde wouldn’t see that it was a lie. Of course, he knew what was with Tasha. Immediately, he tried not to thought about Tasha and her reaction. He was deeply hurt by it, he felt betrayed by Tasha. She had always been the person who wanted to talk about things that happened between them. She had wanted a good friendship, but today it had escalated. There was a crack in their friendship, and he wasn’t sure if it could be repaired again. For a moment, Reade thought about ending their friendship forever.  
“Because you two are best friends!”  
“I don’t know, Patterson! Maybe she ate something wrong? Whatever it’s none of my business! I’ve to do work now.”  
“Reade listen to me. I’m worried about Tasha. She changed so much in the past five months, that I don’t recognize her anymore! I’m scared that she…might hurt herself!”  
Edgar looked up. “You think Tasha would hurt herself? What made you think that?”  
“I don’t know! It was the same with my brother before he tried out drugs. Didn’t you even see her wrists? Sometimes are bruises there. Or on her arms.”  
“Tasha wouldn’t hurt herself willingly, you know that. Maybe she trained with Jane.”  
“No. She doesn’t train with me anymore”, Jane answered as she walked over to them. “She’s always to tired, she says. Somethings is going on with her.”  
“But what?”, asked Reade and sighs.

**~^Zapata’s apartment, NYC, New York~^**

_“Josh, are you in yet?”_ Roman asked his friend over the headset. _“She’s around the corner.”_  
“Yes, we’re in. Hiding in her closet”, Josh answered calm in a whispered voice. “Are you in position?”  
_“Of course. Is the needle ready?”_  
“I’m not an idiot, Roman. Yeah, it’s ready.”  
_“Good, she’s in her apartment in about a minute.”_ After that, there was quiet and Josh held his breath, when he heard, how the apartment door opened and closed.

After her evening jogging, Tasha felt more control over her emotions. After throwing her shoes and jacked in the corner near the door, she walked straight to her bathroom. While she showered, she thought about the day. She possible had hurt Reade’s feelings, risking their friendship. _“Maybe I should call him? Ask him for forgiveness. He's surely mad at me. After all, I've hit him. Something that shouldn’t have happened! Or I first call Alex or Grandma. They definitely know what to do”,_ she thought and as she washed out the shampoo of her hair. _“Okay, calling grandma isn’t a good idea. She just will say, that I have the temper of my mother. Maybe I can ask Sophie. She might know what I could do.”_ The Latina turned out the water before she pressed the excess water out of her hair. Going through her evening routine, she didn’t hear the noises that came from her cell phone. Putting on her nightwear, she brushed her hair, before drying it with her hairdryer.

After nearly an hour in her bathroom, Tasha emerges from the room. She put away her dirty clothes, when she heard how someone opened her apartment door. Didn’t she close it correctly? Or might it be Reade who used his emergency key to get in because she didn’t hear the bell?  
“Reade? Is that you?”, she asked while she reached under her bed for the baseball bat. Having it under her bed, gave her some safety.  
“No, darling. It’s not Reade”, a male voice said from behind her and she froze. “Did you miss me?”  
Tasha tried to swallowed the lump, that had built in her throat. This couldn’t be true. He had to be in prison, not in her apartment. She tightened the grip of the baseball bat.  
"You know, I missed you, but at the same time I was angry with you because you did this to me."  
She didn’t turn to Josh. Far too great was her fear to look at him at all.  
"I hated you for the last 17 years, but now I realize that you were not mature enough for our love."  
"Get out of my apartment, Josh." She finally turned to him and lifted the racket over her head, ready to hit the intruder.  
"Take that thing down, otherwise you'll hurt yourself", Josh laughed, "You don’t really think you can stop me with that?"  
Tasha snorted angrily.  
"Oh Natasha, you're so naive, just like before", Josh laughed louder, then looked around her bedroom. When he stood in front of her wardrobe, Tasha moved a few steps toward him, took the bat out even further, then let it whip Josh's back. With a groan, the man went to the ground and cursed as the young woman escaped from the room.

 _“I need help”,_ Tasha thought, looking around for her for mobile phone, but didn’t found it. She tried her landline phone, but it was dead. Maybe she could run for shelter at her neighbors. She could hear Josh getting up, could hear his heavy steps on the wooden floor. When she reached the door, and tried to open it, she was shocked that the door was locked. She could have imagined that he would close the door to cut off the escape route. Panic grabbed her body as she ran into her living room, opened the balcony door, slipped through the door, and closed the door again.  
_"What am I doing now?"_ She asked herself and looked around, just to find that there was no escape route. Josh's voice came to her, muffled.  
"You're trapped here," he said, and the next moment he slammed the glass panes of the door and went to the balcony. That was the moment, when he attacked.  
Josh snatched the baseball bat from her and threw it over the parapet. Confused by the sudden attack, Tasha let out a small scream and backed away, but Josh could grab her by her left arm and pull her to himself. She felt his forearm around her neck, his hand on her mouth. From the corner of her eye she saw him pull a syringe out of his jacket pocket. He opened the cap of the syringe with his teeth. Shortly afterwards, Tasha felt the needle stick into her neck. Tasha bit him in the hand.  
Josh screamed and dropped the syringe, letting go of the dark-haired, who pulled out the needle from her neck. Cursed, he held his injured hand and Tasha had a few seconds to flee back into the apartment. Castellano saw, how blood started to rise from the wound. Angry he ran after her, leaving a bloody mark on the white frame of the door.

“You can’t escape me, Natasha!”, he yelled, before he attacked her again, this time with real anger. The Latino tried to struck her, but she dodged again and again. Tasha hadn’t time to response because she was too busy with hitting him in defense. Her blows hit him perfectly and he groaned. Josh slapped her legs away with a kick. The Latina landed on the ground, and seemed to struggle with her conditions. Whatever had been in the inject made her tired. She could feel her eyelids grow heavier and her vision blurred from time to time. But it was not long before she stood again and attacked him another time. But her concentration dropped with every second. Smiling, Josh realized how she was fighting with fatigue. She hit him once harder one last time, brought him to the ground but he sprang up again and pushed her hard. She stumbled, struck her head at the edge of the kitchen counter before she felt lifeless to the ground.

 _"What does it take so long, Josh?"_ Roman wanted to know angered over the headset.  
"She has granted herself," Josh replied, "I just make a chaos and then I come down with her."  
_"Hurry up, the plane does not wait forever!"_

And Josh hurried up: Pulling down the curtains and coats, throwing some books and plates out of the shelfs, making the perfect chaos. Finally, he picked up Tasha, and left the apartment.


	7. Chapter VI:  The reason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year everyone!
> 
> As you can see, I've added another series to the fandom section, because, as my handwritten plot tells, The good wife will take a seat in this story! I won't tell much, because you will finde out later.  
> Please tell me if you find ANY mistakes! I'm currently overworking this story and looking out for them!
> 
> Have a nice day!

* * *

**Now**

* * *

 

**^*FBI office, NYC, New York, 80 hours before the rescue^***

The courier went uncertain through the large office. Behind him, he pulled a transport cart with many packages, which seemed to fell off the cart every second. It was still half-dark in the office and few employees were already sitting behind their desks.  
"Excuse me, Sir. I have a delivery for an FBI team. The agents are Reade, Weller, Patterson and Jane Doe", the courier asked one of the already present agents, as he didn’t find a responsible person.  
The agent, an older man with slightly grey hair, looked up from his papers, pointing down the right gear. "Down there is the laboratory of Agent Patterson. She must be there already. "  
The messenger turned away, and followed the directions. To his happiness, he quickly found the workroom. He knocked briefly at the closed door and then entered. He stood face to face with a blond-haired young woman, who looked suspicious at him.  
"Good morning. I have a delivery for the agents Weller, Reade, Patterson and Jane Doe", he said then, a bit nervous.  
"I'm Agent Patterson," replied the young agent, put her tray on the table next to her and stepped toward him.  
The messenger handed her the first package. It was a small, brown cardboard box that had some air holes on the side and on the cover. Carefully and sceptically, Patterson took the box and placed it on the same table as she had placed her tablet. Then she signed the acceptance receipt and the courier left the lab.  
Patterson looked at the box once again, before she sliced the tape on three sides with a pair of scissors open. After this she opened the container and startled, taking a few steps back. Quickly pulled her cellphone out of her pocket and dialled Wellers number.

 _"Patterson, what's up? It's seven o'clock!",_ came the sleepy voice of Kurt Weller at the other end of the line.  
"I'm sorry for waking you up, but a packet has been given to me. It was addressed to our team, so I opened it. Weller, there’s a black widow in it", said Patterson and her voice sounded slightly hectic.  
_"A what? Patterson, you know who sent the package?"_  
"No. There was no sender on it. Weller, in the parcel was a piece of paper with a code."  
_"I'm calling the others. See you."_ With that Weller hung up and Patterson took a deep breath before she closed the lid of the box.

**~**

  
"What do we have, Patterson?", asked Weller Patterson, as he entered the agent's lab together with Reade and Jane.  
"Where is Tasha?" Jane requested in return.  
"She wrote me four days ago that she’s sick with flu," Kurt replied, "Patterson, why did you call us in that early?"  
"A courier just delivered this package for us. No return address, only our name: Weller, Reade, me and Jane," Patterson replied, pointing at the cardboard box on the table in front of them, "There is a black widow in it, and a paper on with an eight-digit code."  
"There isn’t Tasha’s name on the box? Do you know where does the code lead us?" Doe wanted to know while she crossed her arms over her chest.  
"Nope. Tasha’s name isn’t on it. Well, the code seemed familiar to me, and I hunted him through our database and-"  
"Come to the point, Patterson!"  
"Four of the eight numbers appeared in one of Janes tattoos, but has nothing to do with it. So, I was confused and searched it on the safe internet,” she paused a moment to take a breath, “The code leads to this live stream," she typed something on her tablet and opened a website on the big screen.

On the screen appeared a room, in which a person sat against the wall. In addition, a temperature display was visible at the outer edge of the screen, which sank from minute to minute.  
The person had long dark brown hair, wearing short grey sleeping shorts with a large T-shirt. The agents were instantly certain that it was a woman. The prisoner was trembling, his arms had wrapped around her bent legs and her head was on his knees.  
"Tasha!", cried Reade suddenly and stepped forward.  
"What?! Reade are you sure?" Kurt wanted to know, terrified and stepped toward his colleague.  
"Yes! I know my partner! This is Tasha! 100%!"  
"Wait, I try to zoom into the picture", Patterson murmured, her hands wandering quickly over the tablet. The agent zoomed at the person and the audience stilled their breath. It was really their colleague Zapata, who was sitting there in her sleeping clothes.  
Just a minute after it, the picture went black and they could clearly hear a humming.  
_"How nice that you have accepted my invitation and have entered the code in your system, Agent Patterson",_ came from a rather distorted, male voice over the speakers.  
Patterson glanced at Weller, who answered. "Who are you? What do you want from Zapata?!"  
_“We want revenge for what she has done to us. Especially I want revenge for my family and me",_ said the voice, and everyone could hear the hate in it.  
"What has she done to you?" Jane questioned, looking at Reade, who shrugged. He probably knew Tasha the best, but he didn’t know everything about her. Jane could read this in his eyes right now.  
_"You'll find that out very quickly, Miss Doe! I hope you enjoy the show."_ With that, the image on the room was back, and Tasha was walking around in it, looking for an escape. For the first time, the whole team saw, how thin their friend really had become.

**^XXX, somewhere in the US 79 hours before the rescue^**

There had only been darkness and silence, when Tasha had woken up some time ago. She had woken up without her bearings, couldn’t see her own hand in the dark. Her head had throbbed with pain. _“How did I get here? When did I get here?”,_ she asked herself, trying to remember something. All she could remembered was, that she had been in a fight with Josh. Her heart begun to beat violently. This was a nightmare. Also, she didn’t know how long she had at this cold place at all.

Tasha thought about all the things she could remember. Thinking about the argue with Reade made her sicker than she thought she could feel. The darkness had given her the feeling of flying, and this scared her. For the first time in her life, Tasha felt like she was really losing control over her life. There was nobody, who could help her out of this. That’s what she thought. _“They won’t be looking for me”,_ she told herself, _“They are no longer my friends. I messed up with them.”_

Suddenly light had been switched on. Inevitably, Tasha had narrowed her eyes, for the light blinded her too much. She must had been too long in the darkness, because the light hurts her eyes.  
_"How nice to see you again, Tasha",_ a distorted female voice had said through loudspeakers, "We have not seen each other for a long time."  
"What do you want from me? Who are you?!", Tasha had yelled and stood up slowly. Uncertainly, she had turned around herself to get an overview of her prison. Her breath rose in front of her. The walls of her prison were tiled, and in the middle of the room, on the ground, was a drain.  
_"I want revenge. Revenge for everything you did to me",_ the voice had said, _" Do you see the camera in the corner? It will send the pictures of you live to the FBI while we destroy you."_  
Frightened by these words, Tasha had staggered backwards and hit a wall, where she slid down. Her friends would see how she dies. Tears had started to rise in her eyes, and Tasha felt how her body started to tremble. After a minute tears made their way over her dry cheek. She wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. At that moment, Tasha had sworn to herself, that she wouldn’t leave this world without a farewell from her friends. She would ask them for forgiveness. Then, and only then, she would leave this cruel world.

Now, that she knew that her team was probably looking at her, Tasha pulled her emotions together and stood up, trying to break out of the cell. A window aroused her attention, and Tasha went straight to it just to find it was latticed. _"Maybe the lattice is loose,"_ she thought, standing on the tip of his toes, grabbed the cold grate with both hands and shaking it.  
_"There is no reason to shake the grid, it will not go down,"_ said the strange voice over the loudspeakers and Tasha was startled something and released the grid.  
"We'll see!" Tasha muttered stubbornly. She began to shake the grating again, but without a tool she would not get it off. Furious at this realization she moved away from the window and looked for another exit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think about this chapter!


	8. Chapter VII: Searching & Help

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for uploading so late. I hadn't really had time.   
> I must say that I am not sure if next week is a chapter coming - I am running out of them, bc I have a writers block, which is terrible for me! I will keep you updated on my IG (repata_is_life)
> 
> have fun with it!

**^FBI office, NYC, New York 79 hours before the rescue^**

"We can’t sit here and see what happens! We have to do something!" Reade said, as he stared at the screen as if he were hypnotized. His voice was full of worry.  
Weller sighed and looked at Jane, who had leaned against the table. "Reade, you've got Tasha's apartment key, don’t you? Take Patterson and Jane with you and looking for clues, what could have happened. I’ll get help and look for hints here", Weller said finally, leaving the lab.

Jane turned to Reade to look at him. He seemed not happy with Wellers decision.  
“Are you okay?”, she asked him, when they walked out of the lab.  
“I’m just worried about Tasha”, he answered.  
“We are all worried, Reade. We’ll find her.”  
_“And if not?”_ Edgar asked himself, and even the thought scared him. He didn’t want to lose Tasha in this way. Once again, he thought about their last conversation, and he started to regret his hard words. _“We can’t leave her there. She can’t die there. My last words to her cannot be “Go to hell”. She hadn’t deserved my words.”_ Reade looked over to Patterson, who seemed to be at the point where she starts crying.  
“We’ll find her, Patterson”, he said, surprised by the strength of his voice. He wasn’t even sure himself.  
The usual perky woman looked up to him. “Are you sure?”  
“Yes. I am. And Jane’s too. Right?”  
“Of course, we’ll find her. But to do so, we should begin with our tasks”, Jane said smiling.  
Patterson nodded briefly. “Yeah…we should go.”

Meanwhile, Kurt sat down in his office chair, thinking about the past minuets. _“What if this is Sandstorm? Roman is still out there.”_ He asked himself, _“What if he want’s revenge for everything? When he want’s Shepherd? Or Jane? What if he’s using Tasha to get us?”_ His mind raced. Tasha was in danger and all he was doing, was sitting in his office and thinking about the what-ifs. This wouldn’t help her, Kurt knew this. It wouldn’t help Tasha, if he was thinking about the why. Slowly, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, and dialled a certain number.  
“Nas? Can I ask you a favour?”

**~^ a quarter hour later, Tasha’s Apartment, NYC, New York~^**

  
"What are we supposed to look out for?", Jane asked her colleagues as they walked down the corridor to Tasha's apartment.  
"After all, what seems suspicious. Or what gives us clues where she might be, or who is behind it", Patterson replied," Reade, you're sure you really don’t know anything?"  
"For the hundredth time, Patterson: Yes, I am! I don’t know anything useful", answered Reade angrily and stopped in front of Tasha’s apartment. He listened for a moment before pulling out the key of his pocket and unlocking the door. "Shit", he cursed as he pushed open the apartment door.

The apartment looked like a battlefield. Jackets, scarves and bags of the pretty agent lay scattered in the entrance area.  
"Oh. My. God. What happened here?" Patterson gave a frightened start before she got over the chaos.  
"It's like a tornado ripped through the apartment”, Jane answered, looking around. In the kitchen laid food on the floor, as well as tableware. Books were in the corridor and the sofa wasn’t in its usual place. The living room table was knocked over, the television laid demolished on the floor.  
"The glass of the balcony door is broken", Jane said soberly, taking a picture of it. Reade nodded. Here had been a fight, and so he started to make his way to her bedroom. There was also chaos and he let out a breath. Meanwhile, Patterson shoot pictures like Jane did, when she noticed dried blood on the kitchen counter. Immediately, she called out for her friends: “I found blood.”  
Jane looked up from where she kneeled. “Is it wet?”, she wanted to know.  
“Nope.”  
“Call the forensic”, Reade replied, before he came out of Tasha’s bathroom, “Maybe it’s from the kidnapper.”  
“Or from Tasha”, Jane added while she looked through the chest of drawers. She was surprised at the disorder that prevailed in it, for Tasha was usually a very orderly person. Carefully she hauled out a bunch of envelopes with a small carton. "I found something here as well," she said and went to the kitchen table with the envelopes to look at the find better. Patterson and Reade appeared at her side, as she opened the first envelope. They were shocked, when they saw the text of the letter.  
_"You little bitch will pay for what you've done to my family”,_ Reade read aloud, _"I'll get you and your family, and I'll start with your nephew! You shall suffer like I did! No matter where you hide, I'll find you!"_  
Patterson swallowed hard. “These are threatening letters. And they are not all in English”, she handed Reade a letter, which was written in Spanish, while Jane looked into the small Box. There were many objects in the carton; dolls, picture of Tasha with “X” replacing the eyes, and a small skull, which was beautiful painted in colourful colours. "What's this?", Jane asked her friends, showing them the skull.  
"Oh, that's a calavera, a skull made of sugar. Popular on day of the dead in Mexico," Patterson said, "They are often served as a gift. Sometimes with the name of the deceased, written on top of the forehead”, Patterson took the  
skull out of Janes hand, to take a closer look at the skull. On the front of the calavera was Tasha's name. Written in a fiery red colour. “Oh”, was the only word Patterson mouth left.  
“That’s not a good “oh” isn’t it?” Reade commented, not looking at his friends. He was reading through the letters and it shocked him. Finally, he knew what has bothered his best friends for months. The trained FBI agent swallowed hard, when he found a picture of himself. _“If you talk to somebody he’ll be the first one to die”_ stands on the back.  
Ed didn’t noticed how Jane went back to the living room, looking around for more information’s.  
Patterson had now also turned away from the threatening letters, and now, together with Jane, went on to the living room when she suddenly began to sneeze.  
"Do you smell that too?" She asked her colleagues and wrinkled her nose. It smelled again after rotten fruit or something else and Reade looked in the kitchen, but there was no dilapidated fruit and also in the trash can not found itself.  
"Maybe it’s coming from the Chinese, this guy boils everything," Reade said with a shrug.  
The blonde agent nodded and knelt in front of the sofa to see underneath as she retreated back. "Something's gone," she said, turning around. Only then did she notice the boxes, which stood next to the shifted sofa and were hidden with a blanket. Curiously, Patterson pulled away the blankets and looked at the inconspicuous carton. She lifted him unconsciously-and the softened ground did not withstand the weight of the contents. The ground ripped open and a blood-stained cadaver fell to Patterson's feet.

**~^FBI office, NYC, New York 76 hours before the rescue ~^**

It wasn’t hard for Nas Kamal to find Weller. He’d called her about three hours ago. She still heard his trembling voice when he told her the reason why he called her. _“It’s about Tasha. Someone kidnapped her. I think Roman is behind it.”_ It had shocked her, to hear that they had Shepherd but not Roman in jail. When Roman was still out there, Sandstorm wasn’t down completely.  
“I’ll help you. I’m on my way”, Nas had answered him and now she was here. Back in the office she missed. She looked around in the big office and found Weller behind Tasha’s desk, looking through her things. Carefully, the NSA agent placed her left hand on his shoulder, making him jerk upwards.  
“You nearly gave me a heart attack”, Weller said when he saw who scared him. “Thank you for coming.”  
“No reason to say thank me, Kurt. Clarify me, what are the facts and what information’s do we have at the moment?" she answered, giving him a small hug.

Weller lead her to his office, which hadn’t change much in her eyes. “The kidnappers set up a livestream”, Kurt sat down on his chair, pointing to the TV on his wall, “We can hear and see her. She can’t hear or see us. I’m not sure if Tasha knows that we are watching her.”  
Nas took a closely look at the screen. Indeed, it was Zapata who was walking in the small room. She seemed to freeze, for she had wrapped her arms around her upper body, and her breath came from a cloud out of her mouth.  
"Did they beat her this badly? Or are these wounds caused during a mission?" Nas requested.  
"They did this to her. According to Jane, Tasha's apartment is totally devastated, it looks as if she had resisted."  
Kamal nodded. Of course, Tasha had resisted! The Latina was a combat horse and certainly wouldn’t give up so quickly.  
"How can I help you?" She sat down in front of his desk.  
"With your satellite access. Patterson cannot locate the IP address", Weller explained, "and with your access to the files, we need everything what has to do with Tasha. Really everything."  
"Don’t you know anything about her?"  
"Sure, we know her. But, Tasha is very quiet about her private life. We just don’t want to miss anything, Nas", Weller sighed. "I have already called her old boss and asked him to come over with some files of people Tasha had arrested when she was at the NYPD. Perhaps there is someone who has something to do with it." He shoved some files to her.  
Nas bowed her head. She understood his point. “I do what I can”, she promised. “Did you find something on her desk?”  
“No. Just pictures of her and her loved ones. And some pills.”  
“What kind of pills?”  
“Painkillers. I’ve sent them down to the forensic, just to be sure. But there wasn’t anything interesting.” His gaze left her face and he stood up, walking over to the TV. Nas followed his gaze, just to see Tasha’s escape attempt.


	9. Chapter VIII: Escape?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, a bit late.  
> Happy reading!

**^XXX, somewhere in the US 78 hours before the rescue^**

_“Here must to be a door”,_ Tasha thought while she walked near the wall, _“Otherwise they couldn’t have trapped me in here.”_ Again, she walked around the room, knocked around the wall and the floor. For sure, there had to be a door, she was sure about this, and she would find it. Tasha turned her head for a moment to the camera which was recording her permanently. _“What they think about me?”,_ she asked herself. Something in her heart hurt for a moment. A sharp pain, that felt like a doctor drawing blood from you. “I’m sorry”, she whispered, not sure, if they could hear her.  
Suddenly a hidden door opened and three muscle-bound, masked men came in. Tasha turned around, looking at them in surprise. There was the door! Her heart skipped with hope.  
"Don’t try to defend yourself, _amorcito_ ", said one of the men with a strong Spanish accent, "It won’t help you. We are stronger than you."  
Tasha stepped took a few steps back from the mans. They followed her steps, and soon she was standing in a corner. _“This is my chance”,_ she thought and then swung the first fist at the man who had called her _amorcito_. The man screamed. Groaned, he took a few steps backwards, cursing in Spanish, holding his nose. Blood dripped onto the clean ground. His two companions watched him for a moment, before they realized that the prisoner had hit him. The men turned their attention back to Zapata, who was running nimbly past them and trying to reach the door.

**^Meanwhile, Tasha’s Apartment, NYC, New York^**

The crime scene investigation, or as they say the _CSI_ , didn’t take care about Tasha's possessions lovingly, as Reade perceived. He exploded nearly by anger, when he saw, how they poured out almost all of the drawers one by one on the bed and searched for further hints. Reade thought, it was his duty to make sure that everything came back to its original place.  
"Hey, be careful with these things!", He hissed at one of the workers as he threw a vase almost lightly on the bed. Reade knew that this was Tasha’s favourite vase. She had told him once, that her grandmother had painted it by herself.  
"Sorry", the man murmured with a shoulder shrug, before he went further into the privacy of a woman, pouring out the drawer with the underwear. Also, Tasha's underwear was searched and Ed had almost a tantrum when one of the men threw one of Tasha's panties to his colleague for fun.

Patterson watched Reade sceptically while checking the bathroom carefully. Of course, she knew that Zapata and Reade were best friends, but that he was so concerned about her privacy was new to her. She had just found his clothes in the laundry room. But she had only taken pictures silently and didn’t ask him, why the clothes were laying there. At the appropriate opportunity she would address him. She was coming out of the bathroom, while one man closed the curtains, while another man pulled the blankets aside, turning on the uva lamp. Slowly, they walked around with the lamp, before they scanned the bed.

"Hey Rick", shouted the worker with the lamp, "I have something here. We have to pack the sheets too."  
"Wait, what exactly did you find there?" Patterson asked.  
"Unknown residues", answered the man named Rick, who had entered the room with a big bag, "Could be anything. Detergent, tonic water, sperm, sweat ...", he counted, and Patterson waved her wits knowingly.

**~^FBI office, NYC, New York 78 hours before the rescue ~^**

Worried, Nas and Weller pursued Tasha's escape try. At the first moment, the didn’t seemed to realize what was happening, until the man with the bloody nose screamed they should caught her. One of the men grabbed Tasha's hair and pulled it back while the other met her. His fist hit her stomach, and the woman went to her knees. The gentlemen were quite in their element, as it seemed. Tasha tried to fight back. She wasn’t as good as Weller knew she was, and he told himself, that she was going to escape. But his hope died soon.  
_"Enough now!",_ barked the man who held her by the hair and hurled her against the wall. Dazed, Tasha tried to break loose, tried to bite the man, but he hit her head violently against the wall until she finally lost consciousness and collapsed.  
As if she were a doll, the men dragged her out of the room. After that, the screen went black and Weller turned back to Nas, who was looking through the first file, which was Tasha’s personal FBI file.

She seemed to fly over a few pages, muttering something. To her surprise, Nas found out that the agent had no lean slate. In her teenage years, Tasha had often stolen, according to her own statement, to supply herself and her brother. In addition, there were minor battles in which she had been implicated, but Tasha had never been displayed.  
Meanwhile, Weller was massaging his temples. _"All of this can only be a bad joke,"_ he thought, before he sat down at his desk again. _“Why did I never notice something? I could have helped her!”_  
“We should talk to her family. Maybe they know something about her disappearance”, Nas said looking serious at Weller.  
“I don’t think Tasha told them about her situation”, Kurt answered directly, “Her brother lives in Chicago, while their grandparents are on a Europe tour.”  
“But then we have to ask them we can reach! Kurt. I don’t know what happened the past months! You have to help me understand it! Do you have the number of Tasha’s brother? Haven’t you noticed the change she’d gone through?”  
Kurt leant back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “No, I don’t have his number, because Tasha never gave me his new one. I’ve noticed something, but I thought it was the aftermath of Sandstorm. That she just needed more time for herself. But she refused to take more vacation when I offered it to her.”  
“And when it began?”  
“It all started after her vacation. She seemed to be worried about her nephew, about her family, but told us that she doesn’t need our help. I thought that her nephew might be serious ill, or that her brother was about to move again. She started to isolate herself from us more and more, but didn’t told us the reason for it. She got thinner – told us that she just wanted to get rid of extra weight, she didn’t own. You know Tasha, she wasn’t “fat”, as she said to us. Tasha was more…”

“We know the reasons now”, interrupted Patterson the speech of her boss with coming into the office. “Hey Nas.”  
“Hey Patterson”, Nas greeted the agent with a warm smile, “What where the reason?”  
“Someone threatened her over nearly six months. We found letters”, she answered “We have them all in my lap. With all the other shit she was threaten with. My team is on it already. But there is some interesting stuff you should see directly. It’s about us.”  
Weller and Nas stood up. “About us?”, Weller asked following his friend to her lab.  
“Well, as I said, Tasha had been threatened, and they threatened her with killing her family and friends.” They entered the lab, founding Jane and Reade over a dozen of letters. They looked up with surprise, when they saw Nas.

Jane hugged the NSA agent, while Reade shook her hand.  
“What are you doing here?”, Jane wanted to know.  
“Weller asked a favour”, Nas replied, “So, is that all you found in her apartment?”  
Ed shook his head. “No, there were also cadaver of animals and dolls, DVDs...” He counted and pointed to the next table, “Someone really hates Tasha.”  
“Nothing more?”  
“Tasha’s apartment has been bugged. We have been able to provide various cameras and listening devices. Most of the cameras were in their bedroom and in the bathroom”, Jane explained and shoved a small back to Nas. Reade didn’t look up, when Jane spoke, but Patterson noticed again, that something was wrong with the agent.  
“I’ve hacked her email account, and found out that they also sent her emails”, Patterson added then, “The unknowns threaten Tasha with our lives. They said, they’ll blow up the FBI if Tasha doesn’t pay with cash. And Tasha paid."  
"How much were the payments?", Nas wanted to know.  
"In the beginning they were about $ 500, then steadily increased, and last stood at §75,000. Zapata wiped out her savings. Her bank account is zero since a month. I can understand why she didn’t went out with us."

**^XXX, somewhere in the US^**

“You did _what_?”, Roman wanted to know, when the men came to his office. “You’ve beaten her? To unconsciousness?”  
“Yes, because she tried to flee”, the biggest said.  
“Yes, she beat us. Look at my nose!”, the second man said, “She’s a beast!”  
Roman kicked the shelf to his right side. Books fell out of it, leaving a mess in front of the shelf. “Does anyone of you remember my orders?”  
“Yes. You said, that you want this bitch in the torture room”, the man with the broken nose said.  
“Did I say, that you should beat her?” Jane’s brother reached out for a weapon. Slowly, he turned a Glock 9 in his hands, not looking at his companions.  
“No.”  
“Good”, his voice was calm, when he turned around, pointing the Glock down to their feet. Then, he pulled the trigger. Three times. The men jolted back. “The next time you don’t follow my orders”, Roman said, “The bullet will be in your head. Devon isn’t mercy as I am. And Josh isn’t it too!” Then he laid down the weapon again, and walked out of the room.  
He ran right into Devon.  
“Good that I found you here, Roman”, Devon said a bit breathless.  
“Are you okay?”  
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine…but Josh. He wants to go inside.”  
“He can’t go inside! She knew that he had kidnapped her!” Roman started to run down the corridor, not waiting for Devon, who couldn’t run that fast anymore.  
“Josh wait! Wait!”, he screamed angry, and the man turned to him.  
“What?” Josh turned around, letting go of the door.  
“You can’t walk just in there! She knew that it was you who took her!”  
“But I’ll wearing a mask. Don’t worry.”  
“I’ll do it. Go to Devon.”  
Roman took the wolf mask from Josh, and put it on. After that, he pressed a small button on the back of the mask and said a few words. His voice was distorted.


	10. Chapter IX: New Informations

**~^FBI office, NYC, New York 76 hours before the rescue ~^**

  
During the past two hours, the team had gone through all the letters and boxes. Right now, they were watching the DVDs. Mostly of them were short videos of Tasha, playing with her nephew or running through the town. Then and now there were a video from inside the apartment. But as further they came to the newest video, as scarier the movies became. They saw Tasha sleeping restless in her bed, saw how she showered or bathed. The team felt, as they were watching a horror movie. These videos were filmed by installed hidden cameras, Patterson told them.  
But even this could get creepier: From time to time, they saw that someone was actually filming her, because the camera man touched Tasha serval times – and one time, he touched her somewhere it wasn’t okay to touch a woman.  
“I can’t believe this had happened”, Jane said, while Patterson switched the DVD, “This explained why she often showered here.”  
“She showered here?”, Weller asked, “I didn’t know that.”  
“I stepped on her mostly in the mornings. She said she had been a stone throw away and it would have been wasted time if she went home and showered there.”  
“And you believed her?” Reade said, and his voice was filled with anger.  
“What should I have done? She wouldn’t have talked to me! Did she spoke to you, Reade?”  
“No, of course not! I tried to speak with her about her weight loss, but she refused.”  
“Did she tell you why?”  
“She wanted to lose the kilos she gained over Christmas”, was all what Reade told them. He stood up, stretched his back. “Could you reach her brother?”, he wanted to know from Nas.  
She shook her head. “No. Mailbox.”  
“I’ll try it again.” With these words, Reade left the lab and walked down the corridor. He couldn’t stand this DVD’s anymore. Soon, the whole team would know about his and Tasha’s one-night-stand and they would ask questions. Yes, he might be last person who’d spoke to her, but this hadn’t been a friendly talk. They had argued. Argued about every single time, Tasha had ignored him in the past months. He called her a liar, and that she should get some professional help. Reade would never be able to forget the pain in her eyes. Pain, he caused. He told her, that she’s blind for what was going on in the team. He told her, that she would end up alone, if she isolated herself more from her friends. After a time, Tasha hadn’t answered him anymore. She had stood there, looking at him with her dark, pain filled eyes, not moving an inch. He had moved forward to her, and shook her by her shoulders, to wake her up. She had answered his touching with slapping him. Slapping him _hard_. That had surprise him – she never had been that aggressive.

“Reade are you alright?”, he heard Janes voice behind him.  
Reade turned around, realizing, that he was still standing in the hallway of Patterson’s lab. How long has he been standing there?  
“Um, yes. I’m okay”, he answered “I just thought about something.” Then he walked away from the tattooed  
woman to his desk. Ed sat down at this desk, pulling out his cell phone. He and Tasha’s brother exchanged numbers, when he had been in town.  
_“Call me if something happens to Tasha. Or if she’s in trouble”,_ Alex had told him and then he had laughed. Maybe Nas had used another number, because as Reade dialled the number, the brother of his best friend answered the phone.

 _“Hello?”,_ Ed heard Alex, screaming to overhear the crying baby in the background.  
“Hey Alex. This is Reade”, Reade said.  
_“Reade, hey. How are you?”_  
“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?” He wasn’t fine. He was sick of worries about his best friend.  
_“I’m good. Just a bit busy. Levi don’t want to sleep”,_ Tasha’s brother explained. _“Why are you calling? Is everything okay with Tasha?”_ It wasn’t usual that Reade called Alex. They wrote mostly about football.  
“This isn’t easy for me to tell you, Alex. Tasha has been kidnapped”, Edgar leaned back. He could hear how Alex swallowed, he could hear how he called after his wife; he could hear the woman speaking and taking the screaming child away.  
_“Tasha has been kidnapped?”,_ Alex repeated confused, _“How? Why? Who took her?”_ His voice was full of anxiety, near a panic tone. Who in the world would kidnap his little sister?  
“We hoped, that you might have some ideas. All we have is a live stream of her somewhere in a room. Is it possible for you to come to New York?”  
_“Not right now. We just came back from vacation. What happened?”_  
“It’s hard to explain on the phone, Alex. Um, all we know is, that the people who took Tasha, want revenge. We do not know for what. Do you know anyone who’d swore Tasha revenge?”  
_“No, I don’t know. She doesn’t talk to me about your work. Could it possible that the guys from the gambling are behind it? Did she start again?”_  
“No, she’s clean. She doesn’t gamble anymore. Do you know any of her former boyfriends? Who might be angry?”  
_“Tasha hasn’t had a long-term boyfriend since college. She told me that she was dating someone, but found out that he’s still married and broke up. But this is months ago.”_  
Reade looked down onto his desk. “Are you up for a Skype conference? We would fill you in there completely.”  
_“Sure!",_ Alex agreed.  
“Great. See you.” Reade hung up the call and run back to Patterson’s office, where his teammates were reading though the letters and papers they found.

Reade wanted to tell the others about his call with Alex, but when he saw their faces, he changed his mind, and asked instead, what was wrong.  
“We found her will”, Jane answered him, handing him a paper, on which was written in red letters: _This will come faster than you wish._  
“Yeah…I know that she has one, but she never showed it to me”, he answered, “The FBI has a copy of it?”  
“Yes, an old one”, Weller said, “Tasha change it a few months ago. See there? In her old will, Tasha donates parts of her fortune to a woman named Sophie Davis, we don’t yet know who she is and how she is related to Tasha. Another part should go to a family called Bishop. The change Tasha made is, that her entire fortune should go to the college font of her nephew.”  
Reade nodded. He could understand Tasha’s decision. She loves her nephew whit her entire being, and would wanted that he’ll have a better life than her.  
“I called Tasha’s brother. He’s up for a Skype conference. I told him, we would fill him in”, he told them than.  
“You can’t tell her brother we will fill them in”, Nas said suddenly.  
“I can! First, he is her older brother and second, he’s a lawyer who can help us!”

**~^XXX, somewhere in the US 75 hours before the rescue ~^**

  
Roman looked closely at the woman who was strapped to the chair. She wasn’t awake yet. Her left eye would soon be swollen. This hadn’t been his plan; his plan had been white torture. And this hasn’t included wound’s in her face. First, he had taken away the woman’s bearing by leaving her three days in a dark, cold cell without any light or sound. Second, he would be waterboarding her, asking her about his mother. Roman started the Livestream again with a click on his smartphone.  
“Welcome to round one”, he said into the direction of the webcam, knowing that the team was there. Then he walked over to Tasha and swung the chair into a laying position. “Let’s see if she can beat Jane in this one.”

Tasha woke up slowly. Her first reaction was to pull at the strains which hold her onto the chair. She pulled and pulled, but they didn’t lose.  
“Don’t try”, Roman said and Tasha turned her head to him. He could see the fear in her eyes, when she saw the wolf mask.  
“Who are you?”, she asked not stopping with pulling at the ropes.  
"Who am I?", Roman said lowered himself over Tasha, "don’t you remember me?"  
Tasha began to sneeze when she smelled the latex. She couldn’t really recognize this strange person. The artificial hair of the mask itched on her cheek.  
"No, I don’t recognize you", Tasha pointed out. The wolf mask laughed maliciously and slapped the dark-haired once.  
"Oh, don’t worry. You will remember me in near future”, he laughed and pulled a towel over her head.  
"Who are you?! What do you want from me? ", Tasha repeated her questions without addressing the words of her tormentor. Her voice came muffled form under the towel.

The next thing Tasha noticed was the feeling of drowning. This guy was pouring water over her head! She breathed in some of the water, swallowing it. The guy removed the towel after a minute or so.  
“Where is my mother?”, he wanted to know.  
“I don’t know your mother!”, Tasha answered, splitting out water.  
“Wrong answer.” The cloth was trapped over her head again. Once more, water filled her nose, making her choke.


	11. Chapter X: Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Devon was driving her finger up and down on Tasha’s lower back. The woman shivered and gripped the ropes harder. Self-control was all she could do right now.

**^FBI office, NYC, New York ^**

The team followed the livestream, until the person with the wolf mask turned to them, waving.  
_“I hope you enjoyed the show. Sadly, I’ve run out of water. But don’t worry, I will continue otherwise”,_ he told them, almost to friendly, that even the best fake was friendlier than him. Two men entered the room then, unchaining Tasha, just to tide her armed into a construction of chains that hung from the ceiling. Tasha tried to harm them, but tome of them slapped her again.  
_“I hope your friend is strong in her arms.”_

They saw, how the men pulled at ropes, and Tasha hung in the air, desperately holding onto her chains. Her feet didn’t touch the chair she had been sitting in before. Her shirt flew up a few centimetres, and Patterson swallowed.  
“She changed so much”, she whispered then and Jane laid her hand onto the blonde’s shoulder for comfort, “This isn’t Tasha as I know her!”  
“I know, Patterson. I know”, Jane answered hugging her friend.  
“Why didn’t she told us about this?”, Patterson gestured with her arms over the table, “We could have helped her!”  
“Would you told us about this, if you were threatened with the lives of your loved ones?”, Nas asked, “Tasha haven’t wanted us to know about this, because she loves you. She would rather die as that she let them hurt you guys, I suggest.”  
Patterson’s jaw dropped open and she stared at Nas. “No! Tasha wouldn’t…” She was cut by Reade who squeezed her hand.  
“Nas is right, Patterson. Tasha would die for us. Just remember the fight in this building. She hasn’t wanted me at her side when you left us to get help. She told me, that I should protect you instead of her. That you were more important”, he told her gently, “We will find her. I’m sure about this.” For the record, he wasn’t really sure if they would find her. His face was solemn, no worries on it. If Patterson wasn’t strong enough for this, he would be for both of them. The gently buzz of his mobile phone broke his thoughts and he looked at it.  
“Alex is ready. Patterson would you…” he asked and the blond nodded. She tapped a few times on her  
tablet and shortly afterwards, the team saw Tasha’s brother on the screen.

“Alex, nice to see you”, Weller greeted the man.  
_“It would be nicer if the circumstances were better”,_ Alex answered, his voice sick with fears. _“What do you know yet?”_  
“All we know is, that the guys who took her want revenge. Tasha may have done something in the past, that had made them really angry”, Jane explained.  
“We thought, you might know someone”, Nas added, “from her past maybe. Or current friends.”  
Alex seemed to think hard. _“I’m not sure I can tell you that”,_ he replied then, looking at Weller.  
“It would help us if you tell it us, Alex”, Weller said, “We need the information’s to make sure that we can find Tasha because…”  
“Look Alex, Tasha has been tortured for nearly an hour today. She’s weak. If you tell us the things you know, we could find her much faster and end this nightmare!” Reade interrupted his boss.

Suddenly, a female figure entered the room where Alex was skyping with his sister’s friends.  
_“Alex”,_ she said breathless, _“You need to see this!”_  
_“I haven’t time for this now, Kate.”_  
_“It’s important! Alex it’s your sister! There is a live stream of her on Facebook!”,_ she stated.  
Alex turned to his wife, looking shocked at her before tuning his gaze in the direction of her smartphone.  
“Tell me the page where the live stream is”, Patterson ordered, “If this is viral, we might have a chance to discover the computer from where it comes”, she added for her friends who nod in understanding.  
_“Um, the page’s name is Urban methods”,_ Kate replied, her voice shaky. She truly couldn’t imagen what was happening to her sister-in-law.  
Patterson worked fast, while the others tried to make Alex talk about his sister’s secrets, and soon she had the page open on another screen of her lap. It was exact what they expected: The same picture they saw since minutes: Tasha hanging on ropes. The difference to their stream were, that in the Facebook stream were standing FBI Bitch Tasha Zapata in the middle of it.  
_“Alex, you have to tell them!”,_ Kate urged her husband, _“The whole world is watching this! If you can help them with your information’s tell them! Natasha will forgive you!”_

Alex groaned. This was far beyond his mental rules. _“Okay. When Tasha was thirteen, she made friends with my then best friend Josh. They went on dates together, fell in love immediately and Josh had done everything for her_ ”, he paused for a moment to calm down his voice before he continued, _“It was like they were already in a relationship, but officially they came together on Tasha's fifth-teens birthday. In the beginning, the two were really cute together, but after a while, everything between them became ... tense. Tasha calmed down and didn’t tell me everything anymore. She was different, and when I found out why, I couldn’t believe her.”_  
“What did Josh to her?”, Jane requested.  
_“He abused her. I don’t know exactly what he did, but it changed Tasha. She hadn’t had a boyfriend then until college. She said, he had punched her every single time she did something wrong. Shortly after her seventeenth birthday, Tasha went to the police and reported him. Josh was convicted and since then I have not heard from him."_  
“Do you remember the full name of Josh?”, Weller asked. He always covered his shock with questions. He couldn’t even believe that Tasha should have been a victim of domestic violence in her youth. Of course, he knew about their drunken mother, and that Tasha and Alex had to raise themselves, but this…this was unbelievable. His colleague was too strong for this! But what…if this strength was just a mask, Tasha was wearing in front of them? What, if he didn’t know the true Tasha like Alex does? Tasha wasn’t easy to read like other people. She kept her secrets inside her very well – playing things down, even when they were worse.  
_“As I said, his name was Josh. I don’t remember his last name. Maybe something Spanish, I think. Maybe the first letter was a C or S”,_ Alex answered, _“I really don’t know it, I’m sorry. But since then she’s really careful with men.”_  
“I can work with that”, Patterson said, “If he’s in the List of domestic violence, I’ll find him soon. You just have to take a look on the pictures, uh, Mr. Zapata.”  
_“You can call me Alex. Mr. Zapata sounds so old”,_ Tasha’s brother tried a laughter, but it failed. To hard weight the disappearance of his little sister.  
“We have to stop this Facebook stream. If we don’t the news will soon ask questions. We can’t risk that”, Nas said, looking at Weller. He just nodded and said nothing.  
“We found her will”, Reade told, “Her whole money should go to Levi’s college fond, if she dies. Before that, she separated it. One part to a woman named Sophie Davis and another to a family named Bishop. Do you know them?”  
They saw Alex nodding. The young man looked suddenly tired. “ _Sophie is the widow of Andy, her first partner. They are still friends, I think.”_  
“And the Bishop family?”  
_“Well…It’s the family of Tasha’s finance. She’s also still close with them.”_  
“Wait. Tasha has a finance?” Jane asked surprised. She never expected that fact about the Latina.  
_“Yes. William Bishop. They met in college and started a relationship soon after beginning. After two years he asked her the question…”_  
“The we have to ask William about it! Do you have his address for us?”, Reade was suddenly full of energy.  
_“He died ten years ago. They never married.”_

Shit. They didn’t see that coming.

**~^XXX, somewhere in the US 74 hours before the rescue ~^**

Somehow, Tasha managed to hold onto the chains. She had lost the track of time long ago. Her arms hurt like hell and she was sure, if she loosens her grip, she would break her shoulders. Her feet were already numb, a terrible feeling. Her mind was racing, trying to remember who the guy could be. Tired of, she closed her eyes but soon after she did it, the door swung open and a person came in – wearing a lion mask. Tasha opened her eyes, narrowing the person who appeared to her to be a female.  
“I’m delighted to see you here”, the lion mask said, “I was afraid you were already back in your cell.  
Tasha didn’t answer, so the lion continued. “You surly can imagen what I want from you, right?” The lion person rounded Tasha a few times. Like she wanted to know, how she looks.  
“You took someone special from me, Tasha”, she added, “And I want revenge!”

“What do you think are you doing with her after you are finished?”, Jos wanted to know from Roman when he entered the room.  
“She’ll be dead by then”, Roman answered, “You know that.”  
Josh didn’t talk about the bush. “What about a deal?”  
Roman turned around to face his friend. “What do you want?”  
“Her. I want just her after you and Devon are done with her. I want what she promised me years ago.”  
Janes brother looked sceptical at his friend. He heard the rumours that were going around here. He heard that Josh wanted Tasha for his pleasure and family planning.  
“I’m not sure about this deal, Josh. You might remember something wrong. Maybe she’s the wrong woman for you.”  
“No, she isn’t the wrong one! She is perfect for me! Listen, I just want her. Nothing more. You can keep the whole money for you and Devon and her child.”  
“I’ll think about it. But I won’t promise you things. You may can have some fun later with her.” The way Roman pronounced _fun_ was a joyful tone in Josh’s ears. He knew, which kind of fun he would have with Tasha. Fun, they used to have when they were younger. And this time, he would finally get what he wanted from her.

Roman watched his friend closely. He wasn’t sure if he would go with this deal. As he has watched Josh over the past days, he has noticed that he wasn’t really about to harm the victim as he should be. _“Maybe Josh just wants the bitch for his pleasure. Not for revenge. He doesn’t seem that angry at her anymore”,_ Roman thought, turning to the monitor of the computer to look about Tasha and Devon.  
The Latina just hung there, but Roman could see that the strength of her arms was leaving. She would tear a muscle if she opens her hands suddenly.

Devon was driving her finger up and down on Tasha’s lower back. The woman shivered and gripped the ropes harder. Self-control was all she could do right now. _“They won’t break me that fast”,_ Tasha promised herself, _“I’ll rather die instead of breaking.”_  
The lion person laughed, walked another round around Tasha, whose hands got pretty wet by sweat by now. “I know about you and Agent Reade”, she said, “I know the truth about you two.”


	12. Capter XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovelys!  
> Sorry for not posting!  
> Here is a new chapter!  
> Sorry, if the spanish isn't correct, I am not a speaker. Feel free to corecct me there! (Scene was inspired by season one)

**^FBI office, NYC, New York ^**

Reade had stormed out of the lap.  
_“I know the truth about you two”_ replayed in his head over and over. These people know about him and Tasha’s one-night-stand. They knew about their fight…He felt sick at these thoughts. He loved Tasha. He had a crush on her, but he also knew, that she just liked him as a good friend. As a _brother_.  
What else could they understand as truth?

“What’s up with him?”, Nas asked Jane confused after Reade had left.  
“I don’t know. He’s like this for nearly the whole day. When we were at Tasha’s place, he was totally different.”  
“Different like what?”  
“Like, that were his own things, the CSI went through, not Tasha’s”, Patterson answered.  
Nas lowered her head, thinking. “What if they are in a relationship?”  
“Tasha and Reade? No way, they aren’t”, Jane said, but secretly, she thought that too. She wanted to add something, when they saw how Tasha lost the grip op the chains. Their friend screamed in surprised and pain, as her body weight hung fully at her chained wrists.  
_“I thought you were stronger”_ , the lion masked person said, _“Sadly, you’re not.”_  
Tasha groaned in pain. _“Shut up!”,_ she split out then. But the lion didn’t answer her but left the room soon after.  
“What do you think she can stand?”, Jane wanted to know from Patterson.  
“I don’t know. Tasha is strong, but in this situation…” Patterson’s voice was just a whisper and she turned away from the TV, leaning down to check the results of the IP-address. “This IP-address is somewhere at the north pole”, she said then, changing the topic. She didn’t want to think about Tasha giving up. Tasha was strong, there were no doubt, but how strong was she under this torture?

They were interrupted by Weller. He waved Nas to him. “Chief Cleve is here”, he said and went with the NSA agent.  
The two agents walked slowly down the hallway.  
“What do you think about all?”, Weller asked Nas after a minuet.  
“About Tasha or the letters?”  
“Everything. I don’t know what to think anymore. I thought, they would talk to me if they were in trouble. That they would trust me. I’m not sure if I can trust _them_ anymore.”  
“Well, I understand your point. You might understand Tasha’s point better then everyone else. The team is her family, and she hasn’t wanted that they hurt all of you. You know her better than me, Kurt. You know that she would do _everything_ in her power to prevent her family from pain”, she answered him quietly, as they reached the conference room where Chief Cleve were waiting for them, “We will find her!” She pushed the glass door open to step in.

"Chief Cleve, thank you for providing us the documents", Weller greeted the elderly chief politely.  
"Of course. I really like Tasha, and when I can help, I’ll do that. Do you already know something new?", Cleve said sitting down.  
"Not yet. We hope to find something in her old files", Nas explained, "When do you have met Agent Zapata for the last time?"  
"That must have been at Andy's annual commemoration. But this is nearly a month ago", Cleve answered, scraping his head, "But I remember that she seemed pretty nervous. She often looked around as if she were being persecuted."  
"You mean Zapata had the feeling of being pursued?" Weller replied.  
"Yes. At least she seemed like this. But I don’t remember it clearly. I for my part, haven’t noticed anything from a follower."  
"Do you have a guess who could have kidnapped Zapata?" Nas asked.  
"Tasha has many enemies out there. It could be each candidate, she ever has arrested", Cleve cleared his throat, "Or one of her ex-boyfriends. There is this gossip at the department, that Tasha once has reported one of her boyfriends. Because of domestic violence - but Tasha never confirmed this. Maybe her mother knows more about it. She’s a very private person, but you did know that already. Tasha won’t ask for help."  
Nas and Weller exchanged a glance. They knew that the rumour was true. "Sadly, the gossip is true. Do you remember other things? Conversations or something with Tasha?”, Kamal answered.  
“Well, we talked about the future”, Cleve responded, “We talked about plans.”  
“What plans?”  
“She said she’s thinking about moving to Chicago. To be near her family. But on the other hand, she talked about that she couldn’t leave her team. And Liam.”  
“Who’s Liam?”  
“Liam was the nickname of her late finance William Bishop”, the chief explained, “Didn’t she told you about him?”  
“No…As you said, she’s a very private person…We just learned about him.”  
“Sad story. Tasha told me that she wants to be buried next to him, if something happened to her. But if that is still in her will her lawyer can tell you.” Cleve had a sad expression on his face. Weller could see, that he cared for his friend too.  
“You will understand, that we have to go through these files now, chief. Thank you for your help so far. We will keep you up to date, if you wish", Nas ended the conversation.  
“That would be really nice of you”, Cleve shook both their hands before leaving.

After the man had left the room. Weller sat down exhausted. Nas stared at him for a moment.  
“I never knew that about Tasha”, he told her then, “That she was about to get married these years ago. She never told us that! Not one word.” He leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his hair.

**~^XXX, somewhere in the US 74 hours before the rescue ~^**

The chains cut into Tasha’s flesh, as she dangled there. The FBI agent had her eyes closed, not wanting to see this room anymore. She sighed, when her fingers started to went numb as her feet did a while ago. This wasn’t good, she knew that, but every time she tried to move her fingers, pain shot through them.  
_“Why do they want revenge?”,_ she asked herself, “ _Why don’t they just take revenge and kill me? Why are they holding me here?”_ Tasha opened her eyes again, looking down at the chair. Maybe she would recognize something, to identify the room. But there wasn’t anything she could identify. Then she looked into the direction of the camera, which seemed to sent pictures of her to her friends. " _Are  they searching for me?”,_ she thought, “ _Of course are they looking for me...I am their friend! I was awful to them! I lied to them. More then I used to.”_ Her heart arched at the thought of her friends. For the first time in her life, Tasha regretted it that she didn’t spoke to someone about her situation. She never actually spoke to someone, not even in her childhood.

Tasha had learned early, that she had to solve her problems alone. Especially the problems she had produced herself, had to be resolved by herself. That's what her brother had told her, after their father had left them. She had caused this problem and she had to deal with it. Even if this would mean her death.  
Death. _“Am I ready to die?”,_ she asked her heart, “ _Am I ready to leave this world?”_ The answer she gave herself was a simple no. She wasn’t ready to die yet, because there were so many things she wanted to do. She wanted to travel around the world, wanted to fall in love again and maybe starting a family. If she would find her own prince Charming – again. Her heart gave a violent beat, as her mind went off. The FBI agent hadn’t thought about her late finance in months. If she were honest, she missed him more than anyone else in her life. Liam had shown her the beautiful sides of the life, that real love did really existed and what that meant. Tears started to rise in her eyes. She missed him really, more than she missed Andy or Alex together.  
What-ifs started to float her mind. If Liam hadn’t died ten years ago, she would have been married for ten years now. They would have a child of nine or ten years now. They would live in a house in the suburbs of New York City, and maybe even have several children. They would have made a road trip through Mexico and Canada – visiting their families, exploring the world. Tasha couldn’t believe that Liam passed away ten years ago. Leaving her alone and heart broken in this world.  
Then she remembered what her grandmother always told her when she was a child: Trust in God and everything will be good. Zapata never really believed in God. Of course, she went to church with her family, but since she had moved to New York City, she barely visited a mass. God didn’t saved Liam, and she hadn’t understood why. If god was mercy, he would have helped Liam. She never had been good at praying, never believed in its powers, like the old woman in her hometown did. But right now, Tasha would try it. Maybe God could help her, even if that would mean praying to a guy no one has ever seen.

**^FBI office, NYC, New York ^**

  
_„Dios, gran desgraducada venido sombre mi. Señor, ten compasión (God is great misery came over me. Lord, have mercy)”,_ Jane heard Tasha muttering when she came back from the toilet.  
“Tasha is praying?" Jane asked in astonishment at Patterson, who sorting the threatening letters, while she run a search for the guy Tasha’s brother talked about. The heavily tattooed woman paid more attention to the Livestream than to files on the table.  
"Huh?" Patterson who tried to focus on the files Weller had give them an hour ago. She didn’t want to look at the screen at all, because if she would take a look at her friend she would break down.  
"I was just surprised that Tasha was praying," Jane repeated her question, while the went through a file, after sitting down next to her.  
"Oh, she prays every now and then, but she isn’t really religious, I suppose", Patterson replied absently, before she put her head in her hands. "I wonder how many files that are in total.”  
“I don’t know that, but enough for us to sleep on.”  
“Do you know where he’s gone to?”  
“I think Weller and Reade are going to ask the neighbours. It’s now nearly half past six in the afternoon, he has hope that there will be someone by now.”  
Patterson nodded slowly. Her face was pale and she looked at a paper. “I found suspect number one”, she said then pulling out the first page of the file she was working through. “His name’s Joshua Santos. Tasha arrested him just before she joined the FBI.”  
“Why?”  
“Drug dealing. He’s out of prison for five days now.”  
“You mean he kidnapped her?”  
“Could be a possibility.”  
Jane smiled lightly. “I’ll call him in for investigation”, she answered then.


	13. Chapter XII

**^Tasha’s apartment building, NYC, New York ^**

Weller watched Reade closely as they drive into the parking lot of Tasha’s apartment building. The sun was already going down, turning the afternoon in golden light.  
“Are you okay?”, Weller wanted to know from his agent who just stopped the car near the entrance.  
“I’m fine”, Reade lied, hoping to get away with the answer. He didn’t want to talk to his boss about Tasha and himself. What was he supposed to say? All Weller knew was, that they were best friends and not more.  
“Reade, I don’t believe you. I can see that this case is bothering you. Please talk to me!”  
“I’m just concerned about my best friend; don’t you understand that? Tasha changed in the past months, and you didn’t listen to Patterson when she told you about this. You seemed not to see what was going on with Tasha, because you just had eyes for Jane. And now it is to late for helping her out of it! Because they got her! Maybe she will die and all we do is asking people and talking!”  
“Careful with what you are saying. I’m still your boss”, Weller said but deep inside, he knew that Reade was right. He hadn’t listened to Patterson’s opinion when she told him about Tasha. “I can understand your doubts, Edgar. I am worried about her too. But how do you would look after her, if you don’t know where exactly she is? Patterson couldn’t track down the IP-address and we are all trying to our best to find her.”  
Reade looked away from his boss. He didn’t want to talk about this anymore, because Weller didn’t seem to understand his point. “Let’s do this. Perhaps her neighbours know more”, he simply answered and got out of the car without another word. Kurt sighed and got out of the car too. The air was fresh and cold.

The first neighbour wasn’t the friendliest. Since they knocked on his door, the old man was blaming Tasha for his problems.  
“Sir, we are here because Miss Zapata was seen here last. She had been kidnapped”, Weller explained, but the man didn’t hear him.  
“It’s always loud when she’s home! Always running around in the flat! I cannot understand one word of my soap!”  
“When did you saw her last?”, Reade wanted to know.  
“I’m happy if I don’t see her!” The man slammed the door shout.  
“Well, he doesn’t like Tasha much”, Reade said, raising an eyebrow.  
“What about we spit up? You do the upper part, and I the lower? We would be faster”, Weller suggested.  
Reade thought about it for a moment, before he agreed.

**~Tasha’s apartment building, NYC, New York, 73 hours before the rescue~**

They asked around for nearly an hour. Sadly, most of Tasha’s neighbour didn’t saw and heard anything. Most of them were hardworking people, who didn’t even know who Tasha was exactly. They were giving up, when a young woman appeared at the main entrance, listening to their conversation.  
“These people are useless”, Reade told Weller, crossing his arms in front of his chest, “They don’t know anything about Tasha’s disappearance.”  
“I didn’t know Tasha is that hated in her building. Maybe we find something on the street cams.”  
The young woman took heart and stepped to them. “I’m sorry, I listened to your conversation…Are you friends of Tasha?”  
Edgar turned to the woman. “Yeah, we are her friends and colleagues”, he explained, showing her his FBI ident card, “She’s missing. When did you saw her last?”  
“Clara Heeler is my name. I’m living next to her”, the woman introduced herself, “I saw Tasha last four days ago. A man carried her out of her apartment.”  
“How was the man looking like?”, Weller asked directly, taking out his notebook.  
“Um, he had brown hair, which wasn’t cut well, it was longer on one side of his head. He had a small moustache, and green eyes”, she explained, “I thought it was her boyfriend, because she they had an argument. Tasha had screamed on the balcony earlier. They fought pretty hard, I guess.”  
“Did he spoke to you?”  
“Not much. Tasha was bleeding on her forehead, when he carried her down. I asked him if she was okay, and he answered, that she just had fallen unluckily. I didn’t ask more.”  
Kurt nodded, writing down something. “What did they argued about?”  
“All I could hear was, that Tasha didn’t wanted him in her apartment. I didn’t understand everything.”  
“Did Tasha call the man by his name? Do you remember it?”  
“I think it was something with an “J” at the beginning.”  
“Would it be possible that you come to our office, that someone could paint a phantom picture by your description?”, Reade wanted to know.  
Clara nodded. “I can be there in an hour, or would it be better tomorrow?”  
Reade looked at Weller. “In an hour is good”, he pulled out a card with the FBI office address.  
“I’ll be there”, Clara answered before saying goodbye to them, rushing up the stairs.

**^FBI office, NYC, New York ^**

  
The two agents decided to grab some food on their way back to the office. They stopped at Subway, grabbing more than a few sandwiches. Both were hungry, and so must be the others of the team. Since this morning, they hadn’t had a break for eating something.

When they entered the lap, where the team was currently working, they saw that Tasha still hung at the chains.  
“For how long is she hanging there now?”, Weller asked Jane.  
Jane turned around, looking at her boyfriend. “I think nearly three hours. It made me think that they forgot her there”, she answered, “Did you guys found out something new?”  
“Yeah, Tasha is actually missing for four days in total. A neighbour told us, that she saw a man carrying Tasha from her apartment. The woman will come over in an hour for creating a phantom picture. As she told us, Tasha and the man had argued before they left.” Reade said and handed her a sandwich, “Also, that the name might be something with an J at the beginning.” Ed sat down next to her. “What did you find?”  
“Thanks. We found a few suspects, Tasha arrested during her time at the NYPD. You can be proud of her, she was…is great at her job. Patterson and I looked out for people who are out of prison right now – and found three. All invited to our party. Nas is still reading the files you received.”  
“Did her brother remembered something?”  
“No. He hasn’t called back since the skype call.” Jane took a bite from her sandwich. Weller also took a bite of his own, before Nas entered the lap.  
“You’re back”, she said, “Did you found out something?”  
Weller repeated the stuff Reade has told Jane and Nas nodded. “I found something…strange in the files. In the first year Tasha wasn’t allowed to field work. The files said that she hadn’t been mentally stable for this. Reading through these memos, Tasha believed, that it hadn’t been an accident, which took Bishops life.”  
“You mean, someone killed him?”  
“That’s what Tasha thought. I mean, sure, she didn’t believe, that her boyfriend had been that stupid to play with his laptop during driving. But that’s what the picture shows”, Nas showed them a scenery picture of a horrible crashed car, “I found out that she had investigated herself when she was forced in the office. I am not surprised that Zapata found out something interesting, but nobody seemed to believed her.”  
“What had she found out?”, Jane wanted to know, handing the NSA agent one roll.  
“She found out that a car had stopped in front of the car, just after the crash happened. The car, that had stopped, had been reported stolen days before.”  
“Please come to the point, Nas”, Weller growled.  
“Okay. Well, both license plates - from Mr. Bishop's car and the stolen - are tattooed in Jane's right knee."  
Jane was surprised. “Why are these two numbers on my body? I don’t understand that…”, she said, looking to Weller for support. But he just raised his shoulders. He didn’t understand it himself.  
“We will figure this out too, don’t worry Jane. Where’s Patterson?”  
“At the restroom. I think she needed a break from this”, Jane answered, pointing to the live stream.

**~^XXX, somewhere in the US 73 hours before the rescue ~^**

“I think we can take her back to her cell”, Roman told Devon during their meal, “What do you think?”  
“I don’t care about it, Roman. If you ask me, she can hang there all night”, Devon replied, “But if you think she had enough, let them take her down.”  
“Good. Did Josh tell you something about him and her?”  
“Just that he wants her. He’s talking to himself since you talked to him. I don’t think that he really wants revenge. He’s too gentle with her. If I had been the one who took her, she would have more cuts. Did he tell you what he wants by her?”  
“No, he just wants her, as you said. To give him what she hasn’t given him years ago. I heard rumours, that he wants a family with her”, He cut off a piece of his steak. “Honestly, I believe these gossips.”  
Devon looked at her friend, while chewing. “But he does know that she uses IUD?”, she asked.  
“I don’t know, but that’s not my problem. He can have fun with her, as long as we get to know where Shepherd is.”


	14. Chapter XIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there!  
> How are you? I know that I am not posting every week, and I am really sorry about this! But my privat life has taken over now and I have to concentrate on other things.  
> I hope you let me know if you liked the chapter or not!  
> Wishes!

~  
Tasha looked tired up, when a man appeared in the room she hung. He had a smile on his lips, an ugly, devil smile. She wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but when he removed the chair underneath her, she shallowed. Her limps were still numb, and when the man worked on her chains, she realized that he was letting her down. The numbness of her limps wasn’t a help to her, when she hit the ground.  
“Get up!”, the man growled, but Tasha couldn’t get up. How should she get up if she didn’t feel her legs? But she tried and fell over again. Tasha looked up at the man’s face – he wasn’t wearing a mask, and it would be easy for the team to check on him once he looked perfectly into the camera one time.  
“I said: GET UP!”, shouted the male person at her, and when she didn’t move, he grabbed her by her arm hard, dragging her out of the room.

Tasha spend the next hours alone in her cell, her limps slowly gaining back its feeling. Thoughts run through her head, leaving her restless. “Who are they?”, was the question which was ghosting on her mind since she woke up in the dark cell, which was now full of light. Right now, she wished, she had told her friends about her problems. Why had she never tried to talk to them? Why had she kept everything inside her? Tears started to roll over her cheeks, as she rolled herself into a ball. This was her personal nightmare, and maybe her death.  
_“Stop thinking about death! They will find me!”,_ she thought, “ _They are the best FBI team on earth. If someone can find me, then they!”_ Zapata relaxed, as she thought about this. Feeling a little bit safe, she closed her eyes, allowing herself to sleep.

**~^FBI office, NYC, New York 72 hours before the rescue ~^**

“Jane, may I introduce you to Clara Heeler? She is Tasha’s neighbour and here for the phantom picture”, Weller said politely to his girlfriend who shook the woman’s hand immediately.  
“Thank you for helping us! Please have a seat! Do you want something to drink? Water or Coffee?”  
“No thanks”, smiled Clara, “Are you taking the picture?”  
“Yes, if this is okay for you? We can also wait for a professional, but to be honest, we don’t have much time.”  
“No, it’s fine. Do you work with Tasha?”, the young woman asked.  
“Yes, we are working together. Do you know her well?”  
“Not that much, I just know that she has this job and is very private. Here and then we have a talk on the hallway, but nothing more.”  
Jane nodded. “Okay, so, what was the man’s face look like? Big? Small?”  
“His face was angular, with a high forehead and protruding cheekbones. His nose seemed rather crooked, he had relatively small eyes, better slip-eyelids. The man had a wry smile on his face, his lips were very thin.”

Jane drew the mans features, showing it to Clara, until it was right. “Do you remember any detail of the man’s face? Like a scar or so?”  
Heeler thought a moment about this. “He had three birthmarks on his right temple, which form a triangle. and little scars on his cheek, as if he had burned himself there.”  
“Nothing more?”  
“No…he’d wore an earring in his left upper ear but nothing more.”  
Jane made a note and showed the picture she just had drawn to he woman one last time: “Did he looked like this?”  
Clara looked at the picture. “Yes, yes he did. But his moustache was thicker, if you understand what I mean.”  
“Of course.” Jane drew the moustache thicker. “Do you know Tasha well?”, she wanted to know then.  
“I wouldn’t say “well”, to be honest. Tasha never talked much about her work – I thought that she just was a police officer. That’s what she’d told me when we met the first time.  
Sometimes we met in the hallway and talked about our personal life.”  
“Did she told you something about threatening letters?”  
“No, but in the last months she was really aware of packets. Maybe there was something inside of it that made her crazy.”  
Doe nodded. If Heeler would know the inlet of those packets, she would have become crazy too. “Tasha hasn’t talked to you about the inlet?”  
“No, but after the 10th she considered moving to Chicago. She also talked once about quitting her job.”  
“Did she tell you why?”  
Clara shook her head. “No. Tasha only mentioned that she has family there.”  
“Thanks Miss Heeler, you were a great help!”, Jane ended the session abruptly, as she saw how Weller waved her to his office, “We will call you if we need your help again.” She stood up, walking the young woman to the elevator. Then she turned on her heels and went to her boyfriend’s office.

“Did you find something?”, she asked immediately, looking up into is blue eyes.  
“You could call it that. Look at these letters. They aren’t actual threating letters. Read them and tell me what they are for you”, Weller answered, “Did you find something?”  
“Yeah. Miss Heeler could describe the man pretty good, with that we will find him. She also told me that Tasha was considering to quit this job and move to Chicago.” Jane grabbed one of the letters from Wellers desk

 

_November 2000_

_Dear Tasha,_

the letter said,

_I hope you are well and taking care of your health? I remembered that when I saw you last time you were terrible ill. You were as skinny as a cow in the Death Valley. Do you eat good enough? Does your Granny still cook good? I really hope that you remember me, your boyfriend? I feel really sad about the fact that you haven’t visited me here yet. You promised it me at court, remember? And you aren’t a person who broke promises, Nat. I know you._

It seemed to be a nice letter, until it got weird.

_How is our child doing? My lawyer said that you believe you are pregnant? Is he right? If this is so, I am very pleased with that! That will be the fact, why you can’t come and visit me! You have to take care of our child! You have to be very careful and a long car ride isn’t good for both of you I suppose! Take care of you, Darling! I hope to read from you soon._

_Wishes,_  
_J._

 

“This is a weird love letter. Where did you find them?”  
“They were between the threating letters”, Nas told Jane, while Weller was scrolling though some files on his laptop, trying not to listen to he girl’s talk. “They are all set in the years between 2000 and 2001. All the same stuff: Asking, if she’s healthy and if she’s eating good. And in all letters is the question about a baby.”  
Jane overlooked the other letters. “Do you think it was this Josh? The one her brother talked about? Do you think she was pregnant?”  
“Possible, that this is the same Josh. I don’t know…I mean…Tasha was seventeen at this time…girls who are in this age are fast thinking that they are pregnant. Does Alex know something about a pregnancy? We have to find this Josh!”  
“Maybe it’s the man Miss Heeler described. We can’t ask him all about Tasha! It’s a sensitive topic!”  
Both woman looked up to the livestream, where they could see Tasha sleeping. Her sleep wasn’t peaceful, it was a tossing around on the hard ground, talking in her sleep, but they couldn’t understand what she was talking about.

“Jane, tomorrow you will go and ask the Bishop Family. It’s to late for that now”, Weller said suddenly, “If Tasha has still contact with them, as her brother said, they might know something.”  
Jane nodded. She didn’t like the tone of voice her boyfriend used. It was a commanding tone, one he normally didn’t use in this kind of situation.  
“Sure”, she answered looking at him, but he looked straight at his desktop.  
“Is Patterson still in the locker room?”  
“I think so, she isn’t in her lap. Should I get her?”, Jane asked.  
“Yeah. Maybe the lap has found out by what the liquid from Tasha’s bed is.”  
Doe nodded again, leaving the office.

Now that Weller was alone in his office with Nas, he sighed. He couldn’t understand why Tasha never tried to talk to him. He had been with her since her first day at the FBI. Weller had tried to settle the eternal contest between Tasha and Reade, who had started the same day at the FBI. Reade was one of his best friends in the entire world, but Tasha had grown to his heart, like she was his sister. He kept an eye on her when she was undercover, never letting her hurt. On the other side, Tasha was there, when he needed someone to talk to. Tasha knew about Taylor, about Emma and about the situation with his father.

 _“Maybe you should visit him”,_ she had told him once, _“He is still your father, you know?”_  
_“I know”,_ he had answered, _“But he killed my best friend, Tasha! I can’t forgive him that!”_  
_“You already told me that. And honestly, you just can go in there for five to ten minutes. This won’t hurt you.”_

She always told him honest, what she thought and he loved that about her. Maybe this had closed his eyes to her problems. He hadn’t known, that she had been gambling for years. He hadn’t known, the stuff they knew about her now.


	15. Chapter XIV

Jane stepped into the locker room, the minute Patterson came out of the shower area, with wet hair.  
“Sorry for interrupting”, the tattooed woman said, “I thought you were just sitting here.”  
“It’s okay”, Patterson answered, throwing her soap into her locker, heading over to the sink, for drying hair. “I needed it.”  
“I understand it totally.” Jane sat down on the bench, standing in the middle of the room. “Weller and Reade bought food.”  
“I am not hungry, thanks.” Patterson started to comb her hair, before drying it.  
“Did the lap found out what the fluid on Tasha’s bed is?”, Jane then asked.  
“Not yet”, the blond woman explained, “They are really slow today.”  
Jane looked at Patterson’s face in the mirror. The agent looked pale and tired. This whole situation was taking down the young woman and Jane felt sorry for her. “Maybe this reminds her of Mayfair”, Jane thought, looking away from her friend. “Miss Heeler was here for the picture”, Jane said aloud then, “I brought it to your lap and scanned it.”  
“Thanks”, Patterson mumbled, not really in the mood for a small talk. She liked Jane, but right now, she wanted to be alone. She had lied to Jane. She already had the result of the found liquid. And she didn’t like it. “I’ll put the picture up with the search after this Josh.”  
“Your team already uploaded it to the data and search. Maybe we will find him faster with the picture. Do you have access to Tasha's medical file?”  
“Uh, yes only the stuff from the police department and FBI stuff, why?”  
“Just asking. I am at your lap, if you need me, okay?” Jane got up and left the room.

Patterson looked after her. What was going on with her team?  
Finally, her hair was dry enough, she headed her way out of the room, looking for Reade. She needed to talk to him about the result. It didn’t take her long for finding her Afro-American friend. Reade was sitting at his desk, viewing some files.  
“Reade, do you have time for a talk?” Patterson wanted to know, standing in front of him, suddenly uncomfortable.  
“Sure, what’s up?” Reade wanted to know, pointing to the chair next to him.  
“Not here. Common.” Without another word, she walked back to the locker room, right into the dead angle of the camera. Confused, Reade followed her.  
“Patterson, what’s going on with?”  
“The fluid we found on Tasha’s bed is your sperm Reade! _Yours_!” The woman split out angrily. “Are you in a relationship with her, Reade?”  
“Shh! No, I am not!”  
“Then explain me, why is your sperm on her bed and your clothing’s in her laundry room?! What’s going on with you two?”  
“My washing machine isn’t working okay? Tasha said, she would wash my clothes with hers!”  
“So, you have an affair with Tasha?”  
“No! I don’t have an affair with her!”  
“Then why are _your_ semen in _her_ bed?! Explain it to me Edgar! And no more excuses! I want answers!” Patterson repeated her question in a yelling, furious tone.  
Reade immediately covered her mouth with his hand. “Shh!”, he gestured her, “Okay, listen. Remember the day we all went to the bar together after work? After you, Weller and Jane left Tasha and I still were there. She and I had drunk to much. She had drunken way more than I, and we end up kissing and left the bar soon. We had gone to her apartment and one thing lead to another thing. It was just a stupid mistake! We both regret it!”  
Patterson shook her head in disbelieve. “I can’t believe that”, she whispered, “Is that why you acted that strange in her apartment?”  
“Yeah. It was four days ago. It had been the last time I saw her. We argued, and I said mean things to her.”  
“We have to tell Weller that!”  
“No! He will kill me! Weller don’t have to know about this! No one has to know it!”  
“Don’t be stupid Reade! He won’t kill you! And it’s important that the others know about this!” Patterson stepped out of the corner, “Why didn’t you said something earlier? It would have helped us!”  
“Because I am scared, Patterson. I mean, it’s not something you say every day: _Wait, I had sex with my best friend and then we had a verbal fight and now she has been kidnapped_. Sounds good, Patterson”, Reade said sarcastic, “As if that would make it better. I don’t know what happened after I left. All I know is, that I really hurt her feelings and I don’t want my last word to her be _Go to hell_.”  
The blond agent looked at him confused. “I totally understand your situation, Reade, but it might still help us finding Tasha. We aren’t at the point of giving up, you know that.”

Reade sighed. He knew that Patterson was right – she was always right, like Weller was. But how could he stand this _whole_ situation? There was nothing (even if there was something) he could do to help Tasha. All day long he had been reading the threating letters, had watched the livestream. They haven’t found out something yet and it drove him mad. Slowly, the FBI agent sat down on the bench, after following Patterson out of the corner.  
“I can’t believe all of this”, he told Patterson then, “Why didn’t we helped her? We saw her break. We saw that she had problems.”  
Patterson sat down next to him. “Because of her pride”, she answered him gently, “I asked her a few times, if she was okay. If she had problems. She told me, that it was nothing I should worry about. That it was something with her family. Tasha wasn’t herself anymore. She was like another person. I tried to talk to Weller about this, but he said that she just needed some time for herself and that she had a tough time.”  
“Wait, you tried to talk with Weller about her? And he did _nothing_?”  
“He listened, but nothing more.”  
This made Reade more furious. He couldn’t understand why Weller haven’t done something! Before everything with Jane happened, Weller would have done everything for his team, to prevent them from harm. But since Jane was at his side… “ _Stop that right now! I can’t blame Jane for this. Weller changed. I changed. Patterson changed. Tasha changed. We aren’t the people we were two years ago_!” Reade thought bitterly, “ _It’s not Janes fault that Tasha acted like this_.”  
He looked at Patterson who was more than pale. “What about if you eat something? I bought you a pastrami sandwich.”  
“I am not hungry, thank you.”  
“Please, eat half of it. I am not asking for more. Or don’t you remember what happened last time we had this kind of stress? You collapsed.”  
The usually perky agent observed her friend for a few minutes. Then she agreed. “Okay. Half of it. No more.”  
“Good girl”, Reade tried to joke, but it wasn’t a good timing.

**~^House of Tasha’s brother, Chicago, Illinois, 71 hours before the rescue ~^**

Apprehensive, Kate watched the livestream on Facebook. She had never thought that her sister-in-law could get in such trouble. Sure, she’d knew Tasha for over ten years now, but she never really got through to her. Of course, the two women were good friends, but Tasha never talked much about her past. The young mother thought about her husband’s words. She hadn’t known, that Tasha had been abused in her teenage years. The Latina seemed to tough for it. Now, knowing this, Kate saw Tasha in a complete new light. Staying private seemed to be a good idea.

Slowly, the woman scrolled down in the comment area beneath the stream.  
_“Stop it! This is torture!”_ someone wrote, but this person was alone with this statement. Comments like “ _She deserves it!”_ or “ _Damn FBI! Finally, they get what they deserve!”_ were more common. One even wrote other ideas for torturing, while another one wrote that he would love to have her in his bed. It was disgusting, and Kate wanted to throw up. Tasha didn’t deserve this, and she hoped, that her friends would find her soon. She couldn’t imagen, what would happen to Alex, if they didn’t find Tasha. He loved his little sister so much, that it would break his heart if he loose her.  
“Have you talked to your mother?”, she asked then quietly, as her husband entered the living room.  
“Isabel didn’t understand it. She’s too drunk, as always”, Alex answered, “She wouldn’t care about Tasha.”  
“Don’t say that, Alex! She is your mother!”  
“No, it’s true. You don’t know her like I do. When Tasha was about eight years old, our mom took her out of school for a day, for a small vacation. They drove to a bar outside the city we were living. While Isabel was getting drunk, she earned money with prostitution. She completely forgot Tasha, until a stranger said that he would like to go with Tasha. Luckily, Isabel told him, that Tasha was nothing and worthless.”  
“And then? This man didn’t…” Kate couldn’t finish the sentence. Even thinking about it was hard.  
“No, he didn’t. He went with Isabel and left her alone in the bar. We were lucky that the police found her on the street. She was slightly drunk because she had drunk our mother's last drinks, but she was safe and uninjured."  
Kate took Alex’s hand in hers. Her husband never told her about their childhood. All she had known, was that her mother-in-law had an alcohol problem. “I am so sorry, Alex”, she whispered, “This must have been really horrific for you and Tasha.”  
“It was”, the young man said, squeezing his wife’s hand gently, “But we recovered from it. Where is Levi?”  
“I put him down for his nap.”  
“Okay, great. What about we cook dinner? Together? You shouldn’t watch this all the time.”


	16. Chapter XV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confused and curious the agents went through the new-found stuff.  
> “Do you know who Miguel Zapata is?” Nas wanted to know after a while, holding out a letter. The postage was from Mexico.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that I haven't posted in a while! My private life is currently a roll coaster of taking care of my mom and applying for jobs and decluttering our home...I am sorry!
> 
> I wanted to thank you for all the kuddos you are leaving and for the two bookmarks! Thank you!!  
> Attention: If you want to be part of this story, send me your name or a name suggestion! Feel free to comment it or send me a DM via Instragram (if you have)! The first person who is going to be in this story is....  
> BLINDSPOTLOVE! She's an amazing! Without her, you wouldn't even read this story! Please go and check her instagram profile! (It's blindspotlove) and her Repata stories here on AO3!! (It's crazygremlin).   
> Have fun with the chapter!

Nas carefully went through Tasha’s personal belongings for the third time of this day. There had to be something, they hadn’t noticed yet. Her workplace was as clean as Nas remembered it, just that next to the monitor was now a picture of Zapata with a little boy in her arms. She seemed to be happy and smiled her biggest and proudest smile. Softly, Kamal picked the frame up, taking a close look at it. _“That must be Levi”,_ the agent thought. Looking at this happy picture, she didn’t realize, that Weller was standing next to her chair, observing her. After a minute, she put the image back where it has been standing.  
“Did you find something?”, Weller finally asked and Nas nearly jumped up.  
“No, not now”, she answered him calmly, “but here has to be something, we missed.” She opened the first drawer, just to pull out Zapata’s personal belongings. Then she noticed something beneath the stuff. “See?”, she told Weller, and pointed to a fork that stuck to the bottom of the drawer. “Zapata knew how to hide stuff.”  
“Yeah, I know that she is good at it, but I never thought she would do it in the office”, Weller agreed and watched how Nas opened the secret storage room. What they saw made their jaws drop. Inside the secret bottom where money, letters and some other stuff. “I can’t believe this.”  
“Either can I! Do you think these are other treating letters?”  
“I hope not! I am just surprised to see it.” He helped Nas to pull out every single paper. Some of the letters were opened, others not. Beneath all the stuff was a packet of photographs, mostly in a sepia tone.

Confused and curious the agents went through the new-found stuff.  
“Do you know who Miguel Zapata is?” Nas wanted to know after a while, holding out a letter. The postage was from Mexico.  
“No, I don’t know him. I know that Tasha has a cousin named Mike, but I don’t know a Miguel” The FBI assistant director said, taking the letter from her hand.  
“Maybe it’s another cousin?”, suggested Nas, inspecting the pictures. “It’s her, isn’t it?”  
“Yeah, the little girl is Tasha, and this is Alex but I do not know who the second boy is”, mumbled Weller, pulling out the paper from the envelope Nas had giving him.

 

_Dear Natasha,_

_Do you remember me? I am your… father._

_It is very, very long ago that I have written to you, and nothing in the world can forgive that. All the letters I wrote to you back came back and I could not find you anymore!_

_How are you doing? I've been looking for you and your brothers for a long time, you know? I'm so happy to finally find you! My little princess, can you forgive an old man his sins? I can totally understand, if you can’t do it. I left you when you needed me the most, but please give me the chance to explain! It’s all I want._

_I am looking forward to your answer._

_Miguel P. Zapata_

_17th may 2017_

 

“It’s from her…father”, Weller responded after reading the message. “All I know is, that he left Tasha and Alex early”, he explained. “Did Tasha answer him?”  
“I don’t know…but I think so, if you read the other open letters. He told her about her halfsiblings, why he left and that he wanted to meet her here in New York, while visiting his daughter. The only question is: Who is the little boy on the picture?”  
“I don’t know…the letter said brothers. So that has to be the other brother. And I am not talking about the halfsiblings. Do we know when he wanted to meet her? And what’s his other daughters name?”  
“It was moths ago. According to the letters it was back in July. His daughter Sara seems to live here in New York. She’s working at theatres.”  
“We also should ask Alex about them. Do you think it was good that we informed him?” Nas requested, after Weller took a seat next to her.  
“I am not sure…I don’t know Alex very well. But think Reade decided right. Alex has a right to know”, Weller told her, “He is the closest family Tasha has contact to, besides her grandparents.”  
“What about her mother and grandparents?”  
“Tasha doesn’t talk much about her mother. All I know is that her name is Isabel, and that her and Tasha’s  
relationship isn’t good. Isabel is addicted to alcohol. Her grandparents are living now in Laredo, Texas, they run a shoe shop”, Weller explained.  
“Don’t they talk to each other? Tasha and her mother I mean.”  
“Nope. Not if it isn’t necessary. I think the last time they talked was at the baptism of Levi. But I am not sure. Tasha hasn’t told us if Isabel had been around. Do you think we should inform her too?”  
Nas shook her head. “No, if their relationship is like you told me. We have to make sure that we speak to this Miguel. Or this Sara. Wait, I start a Database run about them”, Nas opened her tablet and started typing.

While Kamal was searching, Weller looked around. It was late, most employees have already gone home and he wished he could send his team home too, but he knew they wouldn’t go home. Especially Patterson wouldn’t go home. Not until they found Tasha safe and sound. Kurt glanced down at his shoes, sinking into his thoughts. _“This is my fault”,_ the assistant director thought once again, _“Reade and Patterson told me about Tasha. And I ignored them. I ignored everything about her. They told me in the bar that something was going on with Tasha.”_  
“You think you are responsible for this, do you?” Nas quietly asked him, as I she had read his thoughts.  
“Uh? Sure, I do! I mean, my team told me their thoughts, and I ignored them. I thought that all the cases were to much for Tasha. Or that she was sick. I didn’t take them serious.”  
“Don’t do that to you, Kurt. Tasha only changed because she wanted to protect her family. Now it’s our turn to find and protect her after this”, Nas told him.

**^XXX, somewhere in the US^**

Josh couldn’t wait, until Roman was finished talking to Zapata. Like a child on Christmas he sat on his chair next to Devon, who observed him with disgust.  
“Why is she so important for you?”, she asked him then.  
“She is the love of my life”, Josh told her, “She is my Parker.”  
Devon felt a stitch in her heart. Parker. Her boyfriend, the father of her unborn child. “But she killed Parker. She is the reason Shepherd isn’t here.”  
“And if she had killed Roman, I would still love her.”  
“You know that she is in love with this Agent Reade, right?”  
“He won’t live long, when we are finished with them. When they come for her, we will kill them all in one time.”  
Devon laughed. “Good luck with that. We tried to kill them serval times. They are all still pretty alive. And you want what to do with her later, after we are done with her?”  
“It’s not my fault that you failed with killing them. I won’t fail”, Josh answered, “I will take her to my parent’s house, where I will keep her in the cellar while I will raise our children.”  
“You know that she is using IUD to prevent pregnancies, right?”  
“She is using what? What is this Devon?” Josh never heard of IUD. All he knew were pills and condoms.  
“An IUD is a tiny device that's put into her uterus to prevent pregnancy”, Devon explains, laughing inside her head, as she saw Josh’s clueless expression. “It’s not a problem if you don’t understand it.”  
“How do I remove that thing?”  
_“God, he’s serious about this.”_ Devon looked at the man confused for a moment. Yes, she hated Zapata, but she didn’t really like the way Josh was talking about her. All the months he had been more like a stalker, than a sandstorm member. He had broken into her apartment here and then when she was asleep, filming her and touching her, in areas she wouldn’t have touched a woman during stalking. He had been the one who installed the camera in her bathroom, filming the shower from every angle that was possible.  
She answered him with a quick: “You pull at the string, that’s all.”

Josh nodded. Before he would have fun with her, he would have to remove that thing from her. He hoped that it would be easy and wouldn’t take long. He couldn’t wait to have fun.  
“Roman said, that she took something from you before you went to prison”, Devon then said, “What was it?”  
“My lawyer said that Tasha might be pregnant when I got into prison. But there was never a child, and I think that she got an abortion.”

**~^XXX, somewhere in the US 70 hours before the rescue ~^**

Tasha’s sleep hadn’t been as peaceful as she had wanted it. Her body still hurt, even though she could move her limps again. _“How did I get in here? What have I done, to be punished with this?”,_ she questioned again.  
Rolling on her back, Tasha opened her eyes slowly. Looking around, she expected guards in the corners, but she was alone in the cell. Maybe this was her luck. _“I was a terrible friend”,_ Zapata thought once again, _“I pushed them all away, because I love them too much.”_  
Looking at the wall, tears started to fall to the ground. Tears, she didn’t really notice.  
_“Uh, uh, a big girl won’t cry!”,_ a sudden voice said and Tasha startled. _“And FBI Agent’s do not cry either, do they?”_  
“What makes you care about this?”, Tasha said, unsure if the voice was male or female. Once more, the voice was distorted and a football match was playing in the background, which made it even harder for her to concentrate on the voice.  
_“I just thought that they were trained not to show emotions so much”,_ the voice answered, “ _But I forgot, you aren’t a trained FBI agent. You are just a little girl who attended the police academy, before working. I forgot. I am sorry.”_  
“So, this doesn’t make me a FBI agent?” she asked, trying to stay calm.  
_“I haven’t said that, but my sister thinks that you are a good agent.”_  
“Enough of this play. Who are you? And what to do you want from me?!” Tasha was suddenly full of adrenaline. Why does this person talked about what his sister thought of her? Who was his sister? Her heart started to race. Who kept her here?  
_“You know who I am, Tasha. I am the head of all here,”_ the voice was calm, at the edge of hypnotizing, now without distortions and background noises.

Counting one and one together, it gave the FBI agent chill down her spine. Roman. It was Roman!  
“Roman”, Tasha managed to say, trying to hide her anger, “So this is your game.”  
_“Of course, it’s me”,_ Roman said, _“But this can be soon being over. You just have to tell us were my mother is. And then you are free.”_


	17. Chapter XVI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I couldn't post earlier.
> 
> In this Chapter, we learn more about Zapatas family ( which are MINE characters AND mine ideas) and the name give from a reader to a character is.... Alyssa! Go and check out her Insta acc (@blindspotzapata)! 
> 
> I would love to have a review from you (It's from what I am living here so...)  
> Have fun!

**~^FBI office, NYC, New York ~^**

  
Jane started to choke, as soon as she heard the voice of her brother.  
“Are you okay?”, one of Patterson’s assistants asked her, walking over to her.  
“Uh, yeah. Did you find out something?”, Jane answered, trying to pay attention to the assistant, who shook her head. Then she turned back to the live stream. God, she was tired, but how was she suppose to sleep when one of her friends were missing?

 _“I don’t know where your mother is, Roman”,_ Tasha said, and Jane knew that she was telling the truth. None of them knew where Shepherd was. There might only be a handful of people who knew where she was. And the team wasn’t one of these.  
_“You’re lying Zapata”,_ Roman said and Doe heard how angry he already was.  
_“I am not! I don’t know where your mother is!”_ Tasha repeated, now sitting against the wall.  
Roman started to laugh. _“Well, then we will have a lot of fun together. No one will help you, the whole world is watching this. Not only your friends. Are they still your friends or are they just people you work with?”_  
_“I don’t care if the world is watching this”,_ Tasha splat out.  
_“Are you sure? Because I thought you would care more about it. Isn’t privacy something you write big in your life? I mean, you haven’t told your friends about your late fiancé Liam, did you? You haven’t told them about your gambling. About your family. You haven’t told them about…”_  
Now Tasha was angry. How dare Roman was to pull her fiancé into it! _“Let William out of it! He has nothing to do with this! And I haven’t had a reason to tell them until everything with Carter happened!”_ she gestured wildly with her arms, her eyes full of anger.  
_“Sure, William has to do with this. Do you still think his death was an accident? I mean, come on Tasha, you are not stupid. Not as stupid as I thought you are. By now you should know that Sandstorm is everywhere.”_  
Suddenly, Tasha’s facial expression changed. It was now made of shock. She gasped.  
_“You are a liar, Roman. Williams death was an accident!”,_ the Latina screamed then.  
_“The only accident was what happened to you afterwards.”_ There was something in Romans voice, that surprised Jane. He sounded pity.

Jane turned away from the live stream, walking over to one of the computers. Maybe she could find out something about the accident where Tasha’s fiancé had. She hoped that Roman was just playing with Tasha’s feelings, because she couldn’t stand the fact, if Sandstorm had caused another death. Why would they even have to kill Tasha’s fiancé? The Latina had been in college back then and Jane was sure she hadn’t think about a career at the FBI back then! It didn’t make any sense to her. It took her minuets to load all the articles she found about accident, when Reade and Patterson entered the lap.

“What are you looking for?”, Patterson asked gently.  
“Information’s about Tasha’s late fiancé. We know now that Roman is in it too.”  
“Roman? Your sociopathic brother ROMAN?” Reade said aloud and Jane just nodded.  
“Yeah, don’t act like you haven’t thought about this! He wants to know where Shepherd is.”  
“We don’t know that”, Reade said confused, “the only one who know where she is, is…”  
“…me.”

The trio turned around to face Nas and Weller.  
“I know where Briggs is”, Nas replied and looked at each of her friends.  
“Where is she?” Patterson requested immediately. If this was a option to safe Tasha’s life, she would agree to it. Even if this means to let go of a terrorist.  
“At a secret place. I can’t tell you where, this is top secret.”  
“You have to tell us! Do you think he will let Tasha go when she tells him a lie?”, Jane said, “We are talking about Roman. Maybe even Sandstorm. If Tasha lies to him, he will do terrible things to her and trust me, she won’t survive it.”  
Nas sighed. “I have to make a call first.” It was all she said, before leaving the room.  
Weller watched after her, before turning to his team. “Did you find out something?”  
“It…it seems like, that Sandstorm also killed Tasha’s fiancé…Roman, he talked to her minuets ago, and said something like this. Have you found out something?” Jane answered her boyfriend, who nodded and laid down all the letters and money he and Nas had found in Zapata’s drawer.  
“Nas found this. These are letters by Tasha’s father and mother. Tasha opened the ones by her father but the ones by her mother are untouched. Patterson, can you do a backup check of her father and children?”  
Patterson bowed her head for a yes and grabbed her tablet from the table behind her. “What’s his name?”  
“Miguel P. Zapata. I think we should take a break from this and get some sleep.”  
“No!”, Reade resisted, “We can’t go to sleep. If you can, do it. I can’t sleep while my best friend is being tortured!” How in the whole world could Weller think about sleep right now?! It was something Reade couldn’t explain.  
“What about we take turns sleeping?”, Jane suggested, “First Patterson and I could sleep and then you two.”  
This made Reade think for a moment, before he agreed. Then he looked at her searching results. “That’s a lot of news about his accident.”  
“Yeah, look serval College magazines wrote about this. It seems like he was famous.”  
“Head of the football team, member of the student lawyer athletic Program, and worked as a volunteer at the campus library”, Jane read aloud. She opened a short article from the campus publication, where William had gone to college.

_Breaking news! Our football captain William Bishop has been in a car accident yesterday afternoon! He is in bad condition, as the head of the university told us. By now it’s not clear what exactly leant to the accident. All we know is that Liam – as everybody call him - was pushed out of the road by a speed merchant, and it came to a horror crash on the highway. William is currently laying in the hospital, where doctors had lay him in a coma. We will keep you up to date._

“I can’t believe this has happened to Tasha”, Patterson whispered, “I mean…I know how she must have felt. I lost David.” She looked to her own search but it wasn’t still finished with loading. Patterson hated her tablet. Its technique was too old by now and she wished the FBI could afford new ones. When she looked a second time it was finished with loading.  
“I have the information’s about Tasha’s father”, she announced, bringing the info’s on the big screen before reading them out loud:  
“Miguel Pietro Zapata, born 16. September 1958 as son of Pietro and Maria Zapata in Chihuahua, he and his parents immigrated to the US when he was three years old. He went to the elementary School and high school. At the age of 18 he became an official US citizen”, she made a break.  
“Are there any criminal records?”, Weller asked. Why did it take Patterson so long to read out the facts? Normally, she would have been much faster than now.  
“Um, well, he was once arrested for shop lifting – Here's the thing: Mr Zapata was not the thief, but he looked very similar to the criminal. He innocently sat the year and a half in jail.”  
“When did that happened?”  
“In March 1988. A few days after Tasha had turned five”, Patterson said quickly. “This must have been the reason while he left the family.”  
“But if he just sat a year and a half in prison, why didn’t he go back to his family after he got free?”  
“I don’t know. While he was in prison, Tasha's mom, Isabel Zapata, filed for divorce. As reasons she called domestic violence and bad influence for their three children.”  
Reade looked at his friends. “So, he hasn’t meant to left his kids.”  
“Wait”, Jane suddenly said, “Did you said three children?”  
“Yes, three. Alex is the oldest of the siblings. Then there is Tasha, and Léon”, Patterson explained, before answering Reade: “I don’t think so. According to the court documents, Isabel told the lawyer and judge that her husband beats her and the children. That he was constantly drunk, and repeatedly sexually abused her. However, Mr. Zapata's parents said that this wouldn’t be true. After this, Tasha's mother moved with the children to another state", Patterson stopped to take a deep breath, “He wasn’t able to find them, because as soon as he reached them, Tasha’s mom would move again and he gave up after two years. He moved back to Chihuahua, to take over his uncle’s restaurant, where he still works and lives. After a few years – the divorce was successful for Ms. Zapata – he married again, a woman named Coco Miterra. They have also three children together.”  
“Okay, and where are Léon and these other children living?”  
“His daughter Sara lives here in New York, as I said earlier. Her sister Alyssa is still living with her parents in Chihuahua and their brother Valentin is living in Los Angeles. He’s working at a Starbuck to finance his college. I cannot find something about Léon.”


	18. Chapter XVII

**~^XXX, somewhere in the US 69 hours before the rescue ~^**

Tasha couldn’t stop her thoughts about what Roman said.  
William died by the hands of Sandstorm – was that possible or only another lie Roman liked to tell? This could only be a lie, William died from a car crash. It had been an accident. The police told her that! She saw the car! _“Roman is just trying to confuse me. To make me weak. William died, and it was caused by a speed merchant”,_ Tasha repeated this in her head over and over. _“It has to be like this. Sandstorm hadn’t known me at this time. It has to be a joke by Roman.”_ As soon as she thought this, she remembered Romans other words: The only accident was what happened to you afterwards.

That sentence caused her more pain than the fact that William might have died by Sandstorm. Only a few people knew about this chapter in her life. This list was really short, and included her brother, her grandparents and Sophie knew about it. Not even her mother or her sister-in-law and friends at the FBI knew about it.  
She’d never told her colleagues about it, because she hated it how they would have looked at her. That was the last thing she had wanted. But she hadn’t forgotten about her baby. Day after day she found herself thinking how her life would have been if the little girl hadn’t die days after birth.

But now, it would all come out. Soon, her team would know all her dark secrets. Tasha was afraid of this. What would they think about her? What would they say about her? Will they still be her friends, when they find out every single secret? Suddenly, she felt empty in a way she never felt. She started to asked herself, why she never told them about William or their daughter. She had told them about her abusive mother, about her bad childhood, even about her gambling. Why haven’t she told them? Tasha felt like she had to puck. Were all her friendships based on lies and untold secrets? Right now, she would say yes, but was it the truth?

“I am sorry”, she whispered unsure, if her team would hear her.

 

**~^FBI office, NYC, New York ~^**

Nas returned to the lab about an hour later. She’d talked to Keaton – who was currently in charge of the place where Shepherd were held.

 _“Nas, nice to hear from you”,_ the CIA agent has greeted her on the phone.  
“Hello Jake, how are you?”, Nas tried to sound normal, as if she was calling without a reason.  
_“I am fine, how are you?”_  
“I am fine too, thanks. May I ask you a question?”  
_“Of course. Is everything alright? You sound worried.”_ There had been many background noises, and Nas thought, that he was in the near of Shepherd.  
“I am currently at the FBI. Weller asked me where Shepherd is kept.”  
_“What did you answer? You know that we can’t tell him, right?”_  
“Well I know that. Listen, we have a problem. Zapata has been kidnapped by Devon, Roman and another guy we don’t know yet. Roman just said, that all he want’s is to know where his mother is. We can tell the team the place, trust me! Zapata doesn’t know the place, but we need to get her soon!”  
_“Why are you telling me that?”_  
There had been a moment of silence. Nas knew, that Keaton wasn’t really fond of Weller. But maybe Keaton could help them tracking down the IP address. Or at least to thrown Roman of the track.  
“Because we could need your help. The help of the CIA.”  
_“I don’t have time to help”,_ Keaton had answered cold, _“I am too much involved with Shepherd right now.”_  
“Please think about it until tomorrow, will you?”  
_“Okay, I call you in the morning.”_

“So? Can you tell us where she is?”, Reade asked her, his voice difficult. He seemed nervous, anxious and concerned.  
“I can say more tomorrow”, Nas answered and owned an angry glance by Reade. “Sorry. I want to help, but rules are rules Reade.”  
“I know the way, Nas, thanks”, the agent answered her surprise before turning back to the TV, were they still were watching the CCTV camera from Tasha’s apartment. “I just don’t know how that could help her. It’s not like she’s reading the comments of the Facebook page.”  
“For how long she’s running in the room like this?”  
“Half an hour, Ma’am. It’s the only way for her to stay warm. The current room temperature is 21,2°fahrenheit”, a young lab assistant told her, smiling.  
_“There is no reason for a smile”,_ Nas thought bitterly, but this young woman didn’t seem to know Tasha – otherwise she wouldn’t be smiling. “Did you know that Tasha had a second brother?”, Nas wanted to know from Reade.  
“No, I haven’t. Either I had a clue that she had a fiancé. You know, Zapata isn’t the talkative person walking on earth. She only told me that she has a big family by her mother’s side, but nothing more. I only knew Alex, Kate and Levi.”  
“She never talked about Léon?”  
“Nope, like he never existed. Its Tasha’s way of dealing with pain. Not telling. Something really bad  
must have happened between them, that she never talked about him.  
“Any idea?”  
“No Nas, and to be honest I don’t want to think about this right now.”

The NSA agent looked worried at the African-American. “Is everything alright, Reade?”  
“Sodding hell! Nothing is alright, Kamal! My best friend is missing and I was the last person who spoke to her!”, shouted the agent, stepping away from the table. He run his hands over his head, trying to control his upcoming anger. He didn’t saw the surprised look of Nas. Reade knew that at some point he would have to tell the other – by now only Patterson knew about it. And he’d convinced her not to tell Weller.  
“I didn’t mean to upset you”, Nas said then, observing the man.  
“It’s okay. I am just angry with myself. Our last conversation wasn’t the friendliest one. To be honest, I’ve been harsh to her. When I think now about it, knowing all this”, he gestured around with his arm, “I shouldn’t have said the things I’ve said to her.”  
“What have you said to her?”  
“I told her that she acted like a toddler. I told her, that she’s really dumb, if she thought we wouldn’t noticed her change. Another thing I said to her, was that she messed up this time. I asked her serval questions, but she didn’t answer them.”

Nas listened carefully. Sure, these weren’t things you would say to a person who’s your best friend, but on the other side, those words were honest. “And what have she answered?”  
“As I said, she hasn’t answered. When she hasn’t answered, I got angry, and I... I’ve grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her a little. Not much, just like you would wake up somebody. She got angry about this and slapped me. Then she said I should leave her fucking apartment and never come back. My last word to her were go to hell.” Reade let out a sigh. Even remembering this was pain. If he had known what she was going through, he would have never attacked her like he did.  
“You just wanted to know what had caused her change, haven’t you?” Kamal quietly answered after a short silence between them.  
“That was one of the reasons, yes.”  
“What was the other one?”  
Reade turned away from her. There was no way back now. He had to tell Nas the truth. “The day, better the night before, were all were out. The others left early, but Tasha and I didn’t. We’ve drunk to much. One thing came to another. We had sex, and this was the other reason why we argued. I wanted to talk about it but Tasha gave a shit on it.”  
“Well, this is a very…complicated situation for you, Reade”, Nas reacted to the new information’s she had now, “I know this is the worst time for this to happen. But we will find her. I am sure.”  
He didn’t respond to this and concentrated more on the tablet in front of him.

 

**~^XXX, somewhere in the US 69 hours before the rescue ~^**

Josh looked up when Roman entered the room where he and Devon had waited.  
“Can I go to her now?”, he asked directly, but Roman looked at him angrily.  
“Not now”, he answered coldly, before paying more attention to Devon. “How are you?”  
“I am okay, what about you?”  
“It would be better if Zapata were talking”, Roman answered, “I know that she knows where my mom is! I just have to find a way to make her talk.”  
Devo nodded. “You told her about her fiancé”, she said after a while, “What if you use random pictures of a casket and say that you will throw it into her cell if she doesn’t tell us where Shepherd is?”  
“You mean like exhuming his casket?” Josh replied, earning a hit on the back of his head by Devon.  
“No, you idiot! We will just take random pictures from the internet.”  
“That won’t work”, Josh argued, “She was at the funeral, and knows what coffin he is buried in. If you want to do it, make sure it’s the same coffin.”

Devon and Roman looked at each other in surprise. Josh wasn’t as stupid as they had thought. They knew that he was right, but they had to do something to make Zapata talk.  
“Well, if you are right, go and call the funeral home and ask them if they can tell you the kind of casket they’ve used”, Roman ordered and when he saw that Josh was about to asked again for having fun with their prisoner, he added “Just do it and then you can have fun with her as long and as often as you want.”  
The Latino seemed to be pleased with it, and left the room soon, after picking up his jacket.


	19. Chapter XVIII

The two sat there in silence, until Devon started to speak. “Tell me the truth, did Sandstorm really killed her fiancé?”  
Roman laughed. “No, of course not. We didn’t know about Zapata until 2014, when we started to observe Weller. Why should we do it? It would have been too much work. Well, killing Emma Shaw was a needed action, but I don’t even know who this William was,” he paused and looked at Devon, “But it could be possible that Josh – who is member of Sandstorm since the beginning – asked one of our friends to do it.”  
“Which would mean that Sandstorm killed him”, Devon concluded and Roman agreed.

Roman couldn’t really remember something hearing something about murdering William. It was possible that he simply forgot it by now – it had happened over a decade ago and during this time he had spent the whole years planning attacks with his mother. And thanks to the ZIP attack by his own sister, it was possible that he couldn’t remember it.  
“What do you think to do next to her?”, Devon wanted to know, pulling him out of his thoughts.  
“I am not sure, she hung, we waterboarded her…Maybe we turn the heat a little up in her cell, what do you think?”  
“We could do that.”  
“Or?”  
“What about turning the light out complete and dragging her to a new room? Or simply giving her some of the food and water.”  
“You mean the stuff that’s already bad?”  
“Yeah. I don’t like the idea of Josh and her. I don’t like her, but Josh isn’t really into torturing her. He just wants to fuck her.”  
Janes brother nodded. “I noticed it, but we need him.”  
“For what?”  
“Listen, Devon. When we got revenge and the information’s we wanted, we make ourselves scarce. Josh will take the blame for us, while we leave this stupid country.”

They smiled at each other. They wouldn’t see a prison from the inside again, they thought at this moment.

 

**^FBI office, NYC, New York ^**

It was the 20th DVD they watched in the lab. Weller was as tired as a dog, but he wouldn’t go to sleep. He had to finish the DVDs to understand what had happened to his colleague during her free time.

On the screen he saw a tired Tasha, wearing her pyjama, when she opened the door to receive a packet. He heard her gentle “Thank you” before she closed the door. At the first moment, she seemed happy about it, but her mood changed rapidly. As soon as she had opened it, she closed it, let it fall onto the ground before throwing up in her garbage can. It was their luck, that the carton was open so Weller could zoom in to take a look what was inside of it.  
It made him nearly throw up himself. In the carton was a pig head, freshly cut off its body. In his eyes were needles with a message: _If you don’t pay, this will be your brothers head._ Kurt swallowed hard. Earlier this day, he had this letter in his hands, confused by its meaning.

Suddenly the scene changed – and he saw Tasha in her bathroom, getting ready for bed. He could hear a knock on her front door.  
_“Another packet?”,_ Weller thought, but he was surprised when he heard who was behind the door: Patterson.  
_“Who’s there?”_ He heard Tasha asking, she tried to let her voice sound steady.  
_“It’s me, Patterson! May I come in?”_ Kurt saw how Tasha took a few steps away from her door.  
_“No, I don’t think it’s a good idea”,_ Tasha answered.  
_“Why? Tash is everything okay?”_ Patterson sounded worried, just as she did right now.  
_“It’s not clean here and I am sitting the neighbours cat. Its hair’s everywhere!”_ Zapata lied, hoping that Patterson would go.  
“What about a drink at our bar?” Patterson suggested but Tasha replied, that she was already dressed for bed and really tired.  
The assistant director of the FBI watched how Tasha moved back to her bedroom, not telling Patterson good-bye. Weller pressed the button to move the tape, because all he saw was Tasha toss and turn in bed. Her sleep was restless, but then something happened. Immediately, Weller pressed play, and observed how a man entered her bedroom from the fire stairs. He was wearing gloves and had an own camera with him, filming the sleeping Latina. The unknown didn’t turn to the camera, and sat directly onto Tasha’s bed, gently laying a hand onto her hip.  
“Oh god”, Weller gasped, as he saw how the mans hand wandered under the blanket, before pulling it away. Carefully, the man explored Tasha’s body, before placing his hand in her pants. Disgusted, Weller turned away from it a moment. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, after a moment, he turned back just in time to see how Tasha started to wake up by the touch. In a hurry, the man jumped away from her, and for a moment his face was shown. But he was out of the window before Tasha opened her eyes completely.

“Reade, Nas! I have something!”, he yelled to his friends, who were with him in the lab.  
“What is it?” Nas requested, walking over to him. A few seconds later, Reade was beside her, observing Weller. Then Kurt rewound a few seconds to show them what he had found.  
“It’s a face”, Nas said, “Do you think it’s…”  
“Josh”, Reade pressed out, cutting off Nas’ sentence, “Take a shot of it,” Edgars voice was nearly ordering. Weller raised an eye brow, but without complaining, he took a screenshot from the video.  
“We will show it Alex tomorrow. If someone knows Josh than he. But to be sure I will upload the pic in out Database”, Nas told them, looking at each man, “We will find them. Don’t worry.”  
“As we found Sandstorm last year?” Rede said sarcastically, “Sure, it just took us nearly one fucking year to track them down!” He was more than angry.  
“Reade! Calm down! We do our best to find them and Tasha!”  
“And what if not?! Tasha doesn’t know where the CIA held Shepherd, Jane can’t remember where she was held and we know that Keaton wouldn’t help us!”  
“What has Keaton to do with it?” Weller wanted to know.  
“Nas called Keaton. I overheard his name.”  
“You spied on me?”  
“No! I came back from the toilet when I heard you saying his name!”  
“It doesn’t matter now”, Weller stepped between them, “But Keaton could help Patterson tracking down the IP address the stream comes from.”

Weller looked at Nas. “Do all you can for getting him help us.”

***^XXX, somewhere in the US 66 hours before the rescue *^**

Tasha didn’t know what time it was. She didn’t know if minuets or even hours had passed since Roman had talked to her. But this had give her time to think and remember. Thinking about how she could escape from here and remembering her past.

Zapata still felt sick, as she thought about William. Their time together had been one of the best times she had ever had in her life. Besides that, she had felt _complete_ with him, and happy. She was allowed to be herself, to be crazy and careless at some point. As if had been yesterday, she recalled their last conversation:

_“Don’t be late today, Liam! Cora and Steve want to come over at six!”_  
_“I won’t be late honey, don’t worry. Do you need anything besides the milk?”_  
_“Yeah. We would like to have some chocolate cookies as well as sweet and salted popcorn. God, this pregnancy craving thing is crazy.”_  
_“Alright, I’ll be quick.”_  
_“Oh, and don’t forget the pickled cucumber and rollmops! I love them!”_

Even at this memory, Tasha smiled. She could still hear and see, how he always had laughed and smiled at this eating behaviour.

_“Well, everything my babe wants! Take care of you. I’ll go in now.”_  
_“I love you William.”_  
_“I love you too Tash.”_

Reminding his I love you made tears appear in her eyes. The next thing she remembered from this day was the police showing up at her door.

 _“Are you Natasha Zapata?”_ They’ve asked.  
_“Yeah, that’s me. Did something happen?”_  
_“Ma’am, please sit down for a moment. Your fiancé had been in a car crash…”_  
After this, Tasha saw everything through a veil.

It made reminiscent hard, and she wasn’t sure in which order things had happened back then.  
William parents rushed to the hospital, meeting with her, holding her in their arms, making sure she and the child were okay. They’ve made sure that she ate something and that she slept a few hours. During this time, Tasha was more concerned about Liam than herself. Like a child, she had to be reminded to eat and drink. Every day, she had sat at his bed, holding his hand tight, and when their child moved inside her, she told him how strong it was. And that it wanted to met its father soon.  
But Fortuna had other plans for her.

 

 _“This all happened in six days…Six days to change so many lives. I am sorry I couldn’t take care of our daughter, Liam”,_ Tasha thought, starring at the camera which was filming her constantly. Tears streamed down her face, as she continued to think. _“I wasn’t able to take care of her. I was too weak. I wished I could have kept her with me. What will the others think about me if they find it out? Will they be angry with me? Will they understand it? What will they ask me? Will they ask about my child? Why I never told them?”_

The agent curled herself into a ball and cried. She lost the love of her life, she’d lost their child. And she never really talked about it. Because she simply couldn’t. How was she suppose to tell other people what happened? Her friends hadn’t listened to her, with exception of Cora.  
Cora was still one of her friends, even through she was now living in California. As often as Tasha could she spent her holidays there, enjoying the sun and the sea.

She was deep in thoughts, as she suddenly heard how the door of her cell opened and a person with a rabbit mask entered.


	20. Chapter XIX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for not posting the past months. I had some....privat trouble and work keeps me away from writinig - which suffers in a writer block. Well. Here is a new chapter for you!

Tasha stood up as the masked person entered. The door closed behind the person and for a few minutes he stood there and observed her. At least Tasha thought that he was doing it.  
“You are still a beauty”, the person then said in a normal voice, Tasha knew too well. Josh, “Even with the blood on your face.”  
“Stay away from me!”, she shouted in an instinct before she started walking backwards into the corner to make the space between them as big as possible. She couldn’t understand why he was wearing the stupid mask! First, Roman had worn one and now Josh was wearing one! She damn knew it was them! There was no more reason for them to hide their faces.  
“You can’t escape from this place, you know that. I’ve missed you so much Tash”, avowed Josh taking a step forward her. She was where he wanted her to be. She didn’t response, making her way out of the corner.  
“Haven’t you missed me?”, he continued, stepping in her way, “Come, say it. You missed me! I can see it in your eyes. You’ve missed me as I missed you.”

**^FBI office, NYC, New York ^**

Patterson headed to her lab after three hours of sleep, but if she were honest, she wouldn’t call it sleep at all. It was more like a powernap than a good sleep. The blond agent looked around. She found Weller and Reade asleep in their chairs, while Nas was still awake. The NSA-agent looked tired.  
“Hey”, Patterson greeted her, walking over to her, “Aren’t you tired?”  
The glance the agent earned said everything: Nas was really tired. “Forget the question. When did these two passed out?”  
“About an hour ago. They watched the last footage of Tasha’s apartment. It’s pretty shocking. Is Jane still asleep?”  
Patterson nodded and sat down on the opposite Nas, while she was listening to the woman. “What happened?”  
Kamal took in a deep breath. “A guy broke into her apartment when she was sleeping. You saw it earlier, he touched her sex and on later tapes he also ejaculates…” the NSA agent shudder in disgust, before she continued to talk: “But one time he wasn’t careful and turned to the camera so we have a picture of him.”  
“Did the program found something?” Patterson asked, trying not to think about the scene Nas just has described. She didn’t want to think what could have happened, if Tasha hadn’t woken up. The blonde woman remembered a small conversation with Tasha, she had about a month ago. It was the kind of conversation they used to have before everything went down. Even though Patterson couldn’t remember what they talked about before that, she remembered Tasha’s words echoed recalled in her mind as if she just had said them to her:

_“Did you ever had a weird sex dream, Patterson?”_   
_“No…uh, not really. Why?”_   
_“Because I have weird sex dreams lately. It felt real. Like someone really has touched me.”_

If she had known that this was more than a dream, she wouldn’t have let Tasha sleep in this apartment. Since yesterday, Patterson remembered all the moments when Tasha had told her something private. It mostly happened unexpectedly, not with a reason. Sometimes Patterson hadn’t even noticed that Tasha had entered her lap, standing near the door, quietly observing her.

_“You almost gave me a heart attack Tasha!”, Patterson once said to her best friend._   
_“I didn’t mean too”, Tasha had answered, “I wanted to know if you are up for a little break.”_   
_“Sure, what about a coffee?”_

These moments had become rare in the past few months, but now Patterson saw some of these conversations in a different light. Now, they seemed like screams of help.  
“Tasha sometimes talked about weird dream”, she told Nas, while tipping on her tablet, checking the search results, “She talked a lot about sex dreams.”  
“You think those dreams came from the touch?”  
“Possible, but every time I asked her about specific details from her dreams she said she couldn’t remember it. Might be true, but Tasha is a person who is good at remembering stuff.”  
“Perhaps it was to private to talk about? Or she really couldn’t remember it? I mean…you don’t always remember dreams”  
“Yup, I mean, would you talk about sex dreams?”  
“Not really”, Nas answered, leaning back in her chair.  
“Why don’t you go to sleep? It’s nothing happening right now”, Patterson suggested, “My bed is free.”  
“Thanks for the offer, Patterson. But I can’t sleep right now.”  
“You should try it at least. I haven’t slept much but at least a little bit.”

Kamal sighed. Patterson was right. She was beyond exhausted, even if she hadn’t done much this day. She tucked a loose strain of hair behind her ear, before she answered Patterson: “Okay. I will try. But if something happens I….”  
“…want me to wake you up. I will. I promise.” Patterson gave her a small smile, before turning away from her. Then Patterson approached the big transparent room divider, where they’ve been collecting every information they got by now. Seeing Tasha’s name in the middle was hard for Patterson. Tasha was her best friend, and she’d always thought that Tasha would tell her when something was wrong. She’d thought she’d known all the secrets the Latina had. “Why had Tasha never told us about William?” She said aloud, more to herself then to one of her assistants. Now there was a line going from Tasha’s name down to the name William Bishop. There was just this name, the cause of death and some personal info. She had to find out more, if she wanted to understand why Tasha hadn’t told them about him. The young agent started to search about William again. Soon she had a lot of results. Mostly from the university. But then she found an announcement over his death from the local church paper:

_20th September 2007_   
_Today we mourn the death of our brother and friend William E. Bishop who passed away this morning. He left behind his parents, brothers and sisters as well as a pregnant fiancé. William was one of our best football players. He was really into our community and helped where he could. We send our prayer to his family and friends._

That couldn’t be true. She must have read it wrong! Patterson rubbed her eyes, before reading the lines again. But she hadn’t read wrong. _Pregnant fiancé_. Pregnant. The word echoed in her head and Patterson’s heart raced. If this was the William Alex had talked about this would mean that Tasha had expected a child ten years ago - which meant that Tasha had a child!  
The agent couldn’t stop her thoughts. Why hadn’t Tasha told them about this part in her life? She could understand that it must be painful for Tasha to live with the knowledge that she could have had a happy family life with William? How must it be for Tasha to look at her child’s face and see William in it? But where was this child? Why wasn’t it living with Tasha? Patterson herself had once imagined that she would have a family with David as well. But he died and so did her dream. Now, she couldn’t imagen to start a family with someone else.

***^XXX, somewhere in the US 65 hours before the rescue *^**

Zapata stared at Josh. She hadn’t missed Josh. She was glad that he had left her life, that her brother had helped her to get him out of it.  
Life with Josh had been sweet at first. It had been easy, loving and warm, but after years, he changed. Showed his real face. Her childhood crush turned out to be an old-fashioned minded man. A woman-beating man who doesn’t care about the rights a woman had.

Josh didn’t look at women as a free human being, he looked at them as his property, as something, that was created for his own desire. His opinion was old and traditional. In his eyes, the woman was the reason for the original sin, that a woman had to be kept behind closed doors to not fall back and repeat the sin Eve had done. For him, a woman was there for pleasing the men, giving them an heir and cooking for them. Giving women rights had been a big mistake, his father had told Josh, while he beat his wife. A woman didn’t need a society, she needed to care for her family, standing behind the stove while raising the children. That was what his father had taught him since he could remember.

“Say it!” Josh yelled, and Tasha winced at the sharpness of his voice. She’d hoped that he would never return to her life ever again. But now he was here, standing in front of her, yelling at her as he was used too. Her knees got weak and she felt tears rising in her eyes. Words formed in her throat but they didn’t appear on her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
